


The Sorcerers’ Honourable Incantation and Enchantment Logistics Division

by tawg



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Genre: Character Death, Ficlets, Harry Potter Fusion, Harry Potter/Avengers fusion, Multi, Science Bros, Squibs, Werewolves, Wizard AU, additional background ships, advent calendar fic, set in the US of A
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-19 23:57:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 32
Words: 38,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/579041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tawg/pseuds/tawg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Witches, wizards, warlocks, and sorcerers. The magical community of the Americas can't be trusted to organise themselves responsibly, so thank Merlin they have people who are willing to look out for them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Boy Who Wasn’t

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is like an advent calendar - the plan is that one ficlet will be posted everyday from December 1st through to January 1st. These are not holiday themed ficlets, just ficlets posted during the holiday season :)
> 
> My thanks for to [Mikey](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mikes_grrl/pseuds/Mikey) and [Frankie_Felony](http://archiveofourown.org/users/frankie_felony/pseuds/frankie_felony) for helping me so much with the world-building of this 'verse, and to [Selenay](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Selenay/pseuds/Selenay) who is the loveliest of all cheerleaders. If you're not reading their fics, then I strongly suggest you check these people out.

It was widely agreed that Tony Stark could not have had a more impressive magical pedigree. The Starks were an old wizarding family with many tales of skill and power wound around their history. Howard Stark Sr had carried on the family trade of wand making, but it was his collaboration with Howard Stark Jr that led to the crafting of the finest duelling wands in the world. Howard Stark Jr took the business of wand making and turned it into an industry.

And even if the impossible happened, and Tony was not one of the greatest wandsmen of his generation, his mother’s line had gifts of its own to bestow upon him. Maria Collins Carbonell had attended Hogwarts. A natural at potions and herbology, she had published a neat dissertation on the refinement of healing potions shortly after her graduation. Whip smart and well aware of her skills, she considered her options carefully before accepting Howard’s suggestion that they collaborate. 

They worked together on refining the wand development process. Wands made of tentacula, pliable and temperamental but perfect for the warlock who needed a wand no one else could wield. Wands of dittany, useless for duelling but unparalleled in healing. Wands of aspen with aconite cores, ideal for levitation spells. 

As the progeny of such fine examples of sorcery, Tony Stark was destined for greatness within the magical world.

“You’ll go to Hogwarts,” Maria told him as he sat on her lap, a photo album from her school days held open before him. “And you’ll have such adventures there.”

“He’ll go to Demlars,” Howard replied curtly. He had been educated in Massachusetts, and was proud of his attendance at the most prestigious wizarding school in the Americas. 

“He’ll get letters from both,” Obadiah said, mediating the discussion with his usual calm, distracting Tony by charming his hair to ruffle itself. “And it’s years away yet. Plenty of time to decide.” 

The charm slid off Tony, as they tended to do if the caster didn’t keep their mind on the boy, and Obie smoothed Tony’s hair flat with his fingers instead. Maria was certain that the speedy resolution of spells cast on Tony was a sign of some natural inclination towards untangling spellwork. Howard pressed his lips together whenever it came up, and said nothing at all.

Tony was undoubtedly smart, and excelled within the Muggle education system. And if his teachers often commented on his wild imagination, well, Maria would just smile proudly and agree that creativity was so very important.

“They can’t accelerate him any further,” Maria said when Tony was nine. “The school is advising that he step up to prepatory school.”

“We’re not sending him to Europe,” Howard replied flatly. 

“No point,” Obadiah agreed. “He’s known how to hold a wand since he was a baby.” Tony often played with the wands in his father’s workshop, and if he never made any of them shoot sparks then surely that was a sign that Tony was more responsible and restrained than most children his age. “There’s nothing a prep school could teach him that he doesn’t already know.” 

“We could keep him in the Muggle system until the letter comes,” Maria replied. “It’s important to keep him challenged.”

“And fill his head with more useless information?” Howard asked, and then answered his own question with a derisive snort.

“He’s a kid,” Obadiah had pointed out even as Tony had tugged on his sleeve, wanting a distraction from the old argument. Obie fished a firework out of his pocket and slipped it to Tony, who frowned as the little stick refused to light up no matter how hard he prodded it. “Kids love useless information. Let him kill time how he likes before the real work begins.”

Tony’s birthday was on the twenty-ninth of May. He spent all day sitting by the large windows of his parent’s house in Malibu, scanning the skies for any sight of one of the traditional wizarding messengers, a Hogwarts owl or a Delmars raven. He’d recently learned of Ocadgha, the premiere school for witchcraft in the Oceanic region, and had his fingers crossed for a tiny but colourful lorikeet. He spent his birthday running from window to window, pressing his nose against the glass in the hopes of being the first of the household to catch a glimpse of his letter.

“My little Dittany,” Maria said, wrapping her arms around him as the afternoon waned. “It’s the last day of term. I’m sure that your letter has just been delayed due to all of the report cards they need to send out.”

Tony waited by the windows for three days, before finally accepting the truth that surely everyone else had known. 

He was a squib.


	2. The Soldier Who Was

Steve Rogers could have been an old man. He could have had children and retired, lived in a small bungalow in Jersey and had a long-running feud with his neighbour about the colour of their shared fence. There was an unfortunate difference, Steve knew, between _could_ and _was_.

Steve Rogers was a war hero. He was an honorary captain of the International Confederation of Wizards. He was a man in the prime of his life. He had been all of these things for a very, very long time.

He knew Obadiah Stane by reputation, and had known Howard Stark very well indeed. He had never met Howard’s third wife, Maria, as Steve had cut as many social ties as he could after his first war. Captain Rogers was perhaps the most famous example of a charm gone wrong, and people were still uneasy around him. Especially close to the full moon. Steve made everyone’s lives that little bit easier by keeping to himself. 

Though he had never reached out to Howard’s son, Steve knew Tony Stark by sight. The world’s most famous squib. Despite not having a lick of magic in his body, Tony had done well for himself. Stark Wands continued to secure SHIELD contracts, though Tony made fine money in importing and exporting various magical goods. It seemed like at least once a week there would be a photograph of Tony, smirking and grinning with typical Stark confidence, waxing poetic about the international warlock community and the unfortunate way in which the magical minority had segregated itself from its neighbours.

“You talk of the magical community,” Tony said in one interview. “But what community? There is no international magical community, there is no unity between wizarding nations. Considering that warlocks can move about the globe with far more ease than Muggles, I have to wonder what you’re all doing wrong.”

Steve had travelled the globe. He had fought in Africa, across Europe. He had torn warlocks limb from limb on nearly every continent. He didn’t see internationalism as anything to brag about. Army food was rugged and lumpy no matter where it was eaten. Killing a man in one country was no more enriching than killing him in another.

While Tony’s interviews often made Steve sigh with a longing for simpler times, he kept reading them. Partly out of a debt he felt to Howard, and partly because keeping tabs on Tony Stark was very nearly synonymous with keeping up with current events. Deep sighs were a small price to pay to keep people from clucking at him and telling him that he needed to get out into the world again. Steve had seen more than enough of the world already.

And then one day Tony came up with a scheme irresponsible enough to convince Steve to reach for a quill and some parchment. He needed to make sure that he wasn’t the only one keeping an eye on Stark. He sent a raven to the one man who was definitely too busy for such trivial matters, and who was guaranteed to be paying attention to them anyway.

“Captain Rogers,” Nick Fury said an hour later as he stepped out of Steve’s dusty fireplace. “It’s been a long time.”

Steve looked Fury over. Warlocks had a tendency to age well, and Fury was sitting comfortably in late-middle-age. A few more lines around his mouth, a few more scars on his hands, but otherwise the same. Steve was seventy years his senior and probably looked half Fury’s age. He certainly held no official authority over the man – Nick Fury was the Secretary of Sorcery; the top dog, so to speak. 

“Almost long enough,” Steve replied. “Sir.”

“Nice to see you’re keeping up with the news,” Fury said, nodding at the Boston Scry still open on Steve’s table.

“You’re not going to let Stark go ahead with this?” Steve asked, leaning both hands on the back of a chair. Tony’s latest contribution to the magical community was a _university_ of all things, an institute for higher learning and research. While Tony could barely use a wand to play fetch, he had been able to cram his brain full of magical theory. The gossip that Steve heard in the halls was that Tony Stark wanted to find a cure for squibness, that he would sell his soul to have magic in his blood. Steve had known terrible men who had wanted less.

“There’s not much I can do to stop him,” Fury replied. Tony had the space and the money, had the influence of a celebrity and enough column space devoted to him in the papers to sell anything.

“You could arrest him.”

“And then what?” Fury asked, perfectly serious for a long moment until Steve looked away. “This little project of his could be useful, if he doesn’t get bored of it.”

Steve scowled at Fury. “He’s talking about _sourcery_ ,” he said sharply. That had been Steve’s first war, magic users gone dark and twisted with the need to trace magic back to its origin, to encounter its true form. The term ‘sorcerer’ had been unused in the Americas for decades until the nightmarish memories of the battles of sourcery started to fade. ‘Warlock’ became the preferred term for a magic user, with ‘Wr’ used as a title. Wr Fury and Capt Rogers, keeping American warlocks safe in policy and on the front line. 

‘Sorcerer’ was creeping back into the vernacular, and so apparently was the irrational need for discovery that Steve had sacrificed his humanity to stifle.

Fury shrugged one shoulder. “Coulson thinks it’s safe.”

Steve snorted. “Coulson is running the worst warlock school on the planet.”

“And Warburton Public still has a better approval rating than we do,” Fury replied. The Sorcerers’ Honourable Incantation and Enchantment Logistics Division had long been derided as being anything but honourable, and its reputation had declined since Fury had become Secretary and Wr Hill had taken his place as Director. “If anyone can spot a dangerous idea by now,” Fury continued, “it’s Coulson.”

Steve frowned and turned away, focussing his attention out of the window of his small and boxy apartment. “Keep your eye on Stark,” he said at last, aware that it was a request but delivering the phrase as if it were an order.

Fury nodded, and stepped back towards the fireplace. “I always do.”


	3. Postal Service

Clint hadn’t been especially surprised to find that his animagus form was a bird. His patronuses had always been winged and befeathered, and if there was one theme that had dominated his life then it was his desire to fly away from all of the shit that had happened to him. Natasha had teased him for weeks before they’d done it, assuring him that he would be a unicorn. 

“Hard to catch, hates humans, and a face that can kill you. Yup, definitely a unicorn.”

“We’ll see who’s laughing when I headbutt you,” Clint had grumbled back.

A unicorn wouldn’t have been a bad result, in all honesty. Probably a lot more help in a fight than wings and talons. But the forms were never what you wanted so much as what you needed. And after a lifetime of sudden exits and running until his lungs burned, there was nothing that Clint needed quite so much as his own escape route.

There were downsides, of course. Clint worked as a wand-for-hire with Natasha, which was far less illegal than it sounded. They worked contracts as treasure seekers for Gringotts, or as security at gambling parties where things were expected to go wrong. Sometimes they were thieves, but so long as the payment was above board Clint was willing to place the immorality of the job squarely on the shoulders of their employers. They also did boring things, like escorting restricted communications between SHIELD staff. 

Clint was always the one who got lumped with snatching up the treasure and delivering the important letters, while Natasha got the fun of kicking heads in and causing a riot. But work was work and Clint charged by delivery, so it wasn’t a bad little money-spinner. Director Fury sent out a _lot_ of mail.

Clint curved through the air, riding the thermals above the city, catching lifts from occasional wisps of magic in the air. New York was a good city to be a warlock in – vibrant enough that the little quirks of mannerism weren’t enough to give a magic user away, populous enough that Clint could lose himself in the Muggle crowds when the nostalgia hit him. 

Clint’s family was half-and-half, though his mother hadn’t said a word of it until Clint’s letter came. For years before then there had been odd moments. The bottle of cheap wine his mother was drinking turning into water; his skin refusing to bruise or even sting no matter how hard his dad beat him. Clint was a warlock and Barney wasn’t, and none of it mattered because it wasn’t like they could afford to send him to a private school in Massachusetts anyway. His parents had died before the school year started, something that the warlocks had missed. Clint was a year behind by the time he got into a school that could teach him how to stop shooting sparks with his fists when he got into fights. And even after that he was shunted between the different schools in the Americas, riding various scholarships that never quite stretched far enough. 

Clint was told over and over that the magical community looked after its own. That didn’t explain why he’d spent the first eleven years of his life cringing away from his parents, why he and Barney had gone hungry night after night because a bottle of spirits had been more important than their dinner. It didn’t explain why the teachers always looked at him in confusion come the summer, having conveniently forgotten that he had nowhere to go.

The world of warlocks and wands, Clint had decided at an early age, was just as full of bullshit at the regular one.

If a school like Warburton Public had been around when he’d been a kid, it might have solved a lot of problems. He and Barney could have stayed together, each of them commuting to different schools. Barney might not have taken off while Clint was away at school and unable to chase after him. Clint made it a habit to stay out of politics and to have no opinions whatsoever on contentious issues. But he liked the idea of Warburton and he liked Phil Coulson. Delivering letters to Coulson was one of the few highlights of the delivery gig. 

The boundary of the school rippled over his feathers, and Clint glided along for several feet until he was able to twist sharply and land on Coulson’s windowsill where a pigeon was lying on its side, stunned. While working-class warlocks tended to favour ravens to carry their posts, with owls as the beautiful but moody messengers of the older magical families, warlocks in big cities had grasped the importance of keeping a low profile. More common birds were used for letters that didn’t have far to travel, and no one questioned pigeons coming and going from an old building at all hours. However, pigeons were not renowned for their aim, and it wasn’t uncommon for them to knock themselves out flying into windowpanes, or to simply get distracted by breadcrumbs on the footpath for up to an hour at a time.

Sometimes Clint toyed with the idea of not turning back, of flying away and living as a bird. It would be easier, he was sure. There were only a few people he would miss – Natasha would understand, and Katie would be okay (he could still watch over her). He could probably continue to mooch some of Coulson’s coffee-break pastries. The only thing that stopped Clint from going through with it was the sad reality that all birds were morons. 

And some warlocks were alright.


	4. Black and Blue

Phil Coulson was a busy man. His ‘retirement’ from SHIELD seemed to have more in common with a relocation than the calm life he had been told awaited him. He enjoyed being busy and had always hated monotony, but it would be nice to have a day off once in a while. A charm rang by his ear, letting him know that there were messages waiting at his office window. He picked up his mug and travelled through the noisy halls to the relative quiet of his rooms.

He had been an Oblivator for many years, and had possessed the kind of forgettable face that suited the profession. There hadn’t been many Muggle-borns working for the division when he’d been recruited, which Phil had critiqued once he’d had some standing. Warlocks tended to erase memories and leave nothing to replace them, because they felt that Muggles were silly and stupid people who wouldn’t notice the loss of an evening. Phil had excelled at his job because he littered the emptiness behind with the suggestion of memories – getting stuck in traffic, drinking too much, feeling so very tired after work. Enough to keep people from mentally prodding at the charms obfuscating their memory and untangling them.

There had been an internal national conflict at the time – news of a dark wizard in Europe had been unfortunately encouraging for some of the more excitable exclusionists. War hadn’t broken out within the Americas, but there were attacks on Muggles and riots in some of the more turbulent magical communities. Everyone at SHIELD had been busy and worried and frustrated, and Phil honestly believed that if anyone other than Director Fury had been at the helm, there would have been factions splintering off and the whole thing could have gotten very messy. 

Phil had lost all of his inconspicuousness towards the end of the skirmishes. He’d gotten too close to a hippogriff and, well. He would have lost an eyeball and a lot more if not for Nick Fury. He’d been left with one perfectly common blue eye and one eye with an iris that was so brown it was nearly black, and a broken nose that leaned slightly to one side. 

There was a price, of course. All magic came with a price, though so few people seemed to realise it. It was harder for him to move through the Muggle world with his striking appearance. Rumours had circulated at SHIELD that Phil’s new eye carried all that he saw back to Fury, that he was a spy within the division. When the Secretary of Sorcery had suggested funding a new school, Phil had applied for a position teaching History of Magic. Charms were his strength, but he had spent a lot of time with his wand in his hand and he liked the idea of a quiet job.

He was offered the position of Defence Against the Dark Arts, and Fury advised him to take it.

DADA was typically a high-rotation position – warlocks who cavorted around combating the dark arts during their summer holidays tended to acquire enemies who were well-versed in such things. Delmars had a policy of having any teachers taking up the DADA position draft their own obituary before the start of term. 

Phil had very few enemies who were still alive, and of those none were able to recall him with any accuracy. His continued existence had become something of a selling point for Warburtons, though he tried to downplay it. (Teaching in the Muggle world wasn’t seen as a thrilling or dangerous occupation, and contradicting that belief did not help to convince Muggle parents that sending their gifted offspring to a magical public school was the best idea – Phil was the school liaison sent out to explain why the child in question _would_ be attending a wizarding school.) 

If anything, it were the other posts that needed refilling every few years. 

Delmars held on to its mantle of the greatest wizarding school in the Americas and loved flaunting the successes of its students. It also loved poaching teachers from Warburtons once they had been broken in by rowdy students and learned to handle themselves with some authority. Warburtons had become a stepping stone for Warlocks who really had their eye on a high salary and school feasts. 

Given his history with SHIELD, Phil was also given the task of interviewing the applicants for any positions within the school. A truthfulness serum in the coffee really helped people open up about their aspirations, and then a quick memory charm left them thinking they’d said something painfully stupid during the interview. Some of the upstarts still got jobs. There was too much demand to turn away every applicant who wasn’t ideal. If teachers weren’t poached then they succumbed to the stress of dealing with teenagers every day. If they survived that, there were always accidents in the classroom and personal problems. The painful realisation that teaching was a thankless job sent most people scurrying onto more rewarding career paths. Many of them went into retail, for example.

Phil had been at Warburtons the longest of all the staff. The school was onto its third principal, though Phil had high hopes for Wr Richards. Reed was an absent-minded genius, and had a tendancy to interrupt lessons when he had something that he wanted to say to the student body rather than wait for the weekly assembly. The students loved him, parents liked him, and he generally signed whatever Phil put in front of him. He was also not above getting into arguments with Wr Lehnsherr, the headmaster of Delmars. 

They had been pushing since the beginning to have Warburtons relocated to Central Park. There were areas of the park that were unplottable and it would be an optimal location. Warburtons was located in the building above a bus interchange, which had been charmed to be bigger on the inside. It was a good location – the students commuting each day mingled with peak hour users of public transport. The Warlock Bus Service used the same interchange, and there were fireplaces inside for people who used the Floo network. It was not the best option for security, no matter what Wr Lehnsherr might think about public schools not needing as much protection as boarding schools. The influx and efflux of students each day was a terrible risk, not to mention that the cross-section of students attending the school had an unfortunately high correlation with warlocks who were routinely discriminated against – Muggleborns, impoverished families, and those who had been expelled from other schools. Why else had the school initially been predominantly staffed by Aurors? 

Phil bit back a sigh when he saw Fury’s hawk on his window sill. Another ‘small request’ from the Secretary of Sorcery. He opened his window and offered his arm to the bird, carrying it through his office to a teak perch near his desk. There was an unconscious pigeon also on the sill, but it was snoring quietly and he let it be.

“May I?” he asked the bird, gesturing to the note tied to its leg. The hawk extended its leg and Phil untied the note, being careful not to pull the ribbon tight. So many messengers were left limping after an impatient warlock had torn a letter from them. He offered his hand, and the hawk dipped its head, allowing Phil to scratch the back of its neck. “Thank you,” Phil said, before reaching over to his desk and snagging the third of a donut that had been left over from his breakfast. The hawk took it and happily sat tearing the pastry apart while Phil flopped down into his desk chair.

He was on his feet again before he was halfway through the letter.


	5. Cease and Assist

Obadiah Stane had been Pepper’s first employer. She had been hired to tutor Tony through his two years at Delmars. Tony Stark, orphaned at seventeen, was the first (and had remained the _only_ ) squib to have been admitted to Delmars Academy. Friends of his parents had petitioned the school – he was Howard and Maria’s son, after all. He may never be a warlock (only sorcerers of distinction received the title), but it would be an injustice for him to be shunted out into the Muggle world, especially in this time of tragedy. 

Pepper had studied at Aconite Grove, an all-girls school in Southern Canada, before spending her final year on exchange at Beauxbatons. Her parents had both been Muggles, and while they’d accepted the idea of their daughter having ‘magic powers’ easily enough, they’d had very firm opinions on her being housed with teenaged boys for three quarters of the year. (Pepper had neglected to mention to her parents that Beauxbatons was co-ed.)

Job hunting had been surprisingly hard. She had fine references from her teachers, but she had very few connections to the magical community – spending a year overseas had cooled what few friendships she’d had at Aconite, and even if she had made friends at Beauxbatons she had no desire to relocate to Europe. Sick of getting rejection letters, she had applied for the one job she knew that no one could possibly be more qualified to teach – tutoring a squib. The job included rooms in Mallowvale, the sorcerers’ settlement near Delmars, and a tidy wage. 

She should have put two and two together, but she was still surprised when she had been introduced to Tony Stark. A year older than her (it had taken a long time to convince the headmaster of Delmars to admit him), handsome in a dark and dangerous way, and easily the moodiest person she had ever met. He’d looked her up and down when she’d offered him her hand, looked at his guardian with a raised eyebrow, and stalked off.

“He’ll mellow over time,” Stane had assured her. “He can’t resist a pretty face.”

Pepper had given Stane a tight smile and had assured him that they’d get along _just fine_. When Tony had tried to walk out of their first study session, she’d charmed his feet so they stuck to the floor, and uttered a sharp “ _Silencio_ ,” when he had started to protest.

“Now, you can pay attention as I explain your curriculum, or you can make a fool of yourself like everyone expects you to. Understand?” Tony had scowled at her for a long moment, but he had finally nodded. 

Pepper wasn’t Tony’s tutor so much as his keeper. She was the one who had to argue the school board into letting him sit W.O.M.B.A.T.s (Wizards’ Ordinary Magic and Basic Aptitude Tests) instead of N.E.W.T.s (Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests). Tony was incredibly smart and had an enviable memory for any topic that he found interesting, but he was unable to perform the simplest of spells. The WOMBATs still had a practical component, but they were based on the performance rather than the result. Tony could mouth spells perfectly and had exactly the instincts for holding a wand that everyone had expected from one of Howard Stark’s children. Pepper noticed that people often held their breath during Tony’s exams, as if expecting something wonderful to happen. Nothing ever did, and Pepper knew that no one was more disappointed by that than Tony.

Over time, Pepper learned that Tony had been studying at M.I.T. when his parents had died. “Wow,” she’d breathed, impressed. “You really are a genius.”

Tony had snorted dismissively. “It’s nothing,” he’d said. “Not like this place.” Tony had stayed in a luxurious house in Mallowvale rather than boarding at the school. He hadn’t been involved in any sports or extracurricular activities. For someone who had seemed so desperate to be at the school, he certainly hadn’t spent any more time than necessary on the grounds.

“Tony,” Pepper had said warningly. “I’m Muggle-born. I know what an achievement that is.” She’d rested her chin on her hands and stared out of the large windows of the school library. “I can’t even imagine what MIT would be like. It must have been incredible.”

Tony had shrugged. “It was okay,” he said idly. “Kind of boring, actually. You don’t get invited to many parties when your voice hasn’t broken yet.” Pepper had glanced at Tony, who was still focussed on the rune chart in front of him. “It’s funny, really,” he said without looking up, a twisted smile on his face. “I was always too smart and too young out there. And now I’m finally here and I’m too old and I’m so fucking-” He stopped then, and cleared his throat. “You know what, let’s not do this today.”

“Okay,” Pepper had said, reaching out and rolling the charts up before Tony could fold them and crush them into his satchel. He had been surprised, clearly expecting a fight. “But we’re going to study something else.”

Tony had slumped back into his seat, exasperated and malcontent. “ _Pepper—_ ”

“You’ll like this one,” she had assured him. 

“I will not.”

“Well, that’s probably a good thing,” Pepper had said, making sure the lid of Tony’s inkpot was securely screwed shut and dropping it into his satchel. “Obie made me promise not to teach you, and I’d get into so much trouble if you got a taste for it.” 

Tony had paused then, smart enough to recognise reverse psychology when he saw it in action, but intrigued nevertheless. “Well,” he said at last. “Only because you’re contracted to babysit me for another hour.”

In the fields behind the school, Pepper managed to teach Tony one thing that he proved to be _very_ good at.

~*~

“Merlin’s beard, where is that kid?” Obie asked, years later. The press conference was due to start and the guest of honour hadn’t arrived. Pepper, now on Tony’s payroll and still in charge of keeping him out of trouble, could see Secretary Fury exchanging words with Wr Reed who in turn didn’t seem to be paying a whole lot of attention to their conversation. “Do you know how he’s planning on turning up this time?”

“Same way as always,” Pepper said as a streak of black and gold shot past the wide window of the meeting room in Stark Tower. “With a big entrance.”

“I thought you’d locked those up,” Obie said with a genial grin that did nothing to hide his annoyance.

“You know Tony,” Pepper replied with a sigh. Even magic couldn’t keep him away from his toys.

James Rhodes, the only friend Tony had made at Delmars (despite Tony’s best efforts to avoid making any friends at all), shook his head and couldn’t quite hide a smile as Tony slid in through the open double doors at one end of the hall, skidding across the marble floor on a custom-made Cleensweep and coming to a very precise stop by the podium. He threw his hands up to a round of applause, grinning from behind his large yellow flight goggles.

“It’s a crime he never got his moody ass on a Quidditch team,” Rhodey said ruefully.

Obadiah snorted, though his face was stuck in a grin and he clapped along like he was perfectly proud. “If I ever find the irresponsible toad-ass who taught him how to fly, I’m going to curse their nipples off,” he muttered darkly.

Pepper smiled to herself, and didn’t comment.


	6. The Announcement

Steve stood stiffly in his formal robes – a high-waisted military style jacket with a long tail at the back, black wool with tan edging that denoted his place as an infantryman. The cut of the robes meant that his wand, holstered along his thigh, was always in easy reach. Steve had politely declined the Stark Industries invitation to attend the theme launch for Tony’s great folly. Director Hill had extended a request that Steve attend and represent SHIELD during the announcement, and Steve had declined with rather more venom. And then Secretary Fury had gotten involved. He had formulated a plan of attack so elaborate and devious that Steve had no defence against it.

Fury had told Steve’s aging neighbour, the Widow Dalzotto, that Steve had turned down the invitation to a very fancy lunch event because he had been worried that he wouldn’t fit in.

Steve glared at Fury from across the room, who was deep in conversation with Wr Storm. When the man finally glanced in Steve’s direction, he _winked_. Steve was often trotted out for big events – opening a new wing of a hospital, swearing in a new Secretary of Sorcery or some other position. He’d been in the crowd honouring a team of warlocks who had battled a magical fire in Florida for three days on end, and the team of Bestiary Control Officers who had finally managed to subdue the dragon that had caused the blaze. He’d felt quite sorry for the creature.

Tony’s words drifted over Steve during the presentation. Howard’s sons had their father’s sense of showmanship, though they lacked the good nature Howard had shown when Steve had known him. Tony Stark was all flash and no substance, and Steve asked the warlock next to him what the presentation had been about. 

“Arithmancy, of a sort,” the warlock replied. He had a rubbery face that twisted back and forth as he digested Tony’s research pitch. “Very impressive, actually. Very technical.” He seemed to remember his manners, and offered his hand to Steve. “Reed Richards,” he said by way of introduction. “Principal of Warburtons.”

Steve smiled pleasantly in response, as had once been his habit, and shook Richards’ hand. “Captain Steve Rogers,” he said by way of reply.

Richards seemed to come out of his affable haze of contemplation, and actually focussed on Steve’s face. “Ah,” he said, though he quickly amended it to, “A pleasure!” Steve gave him a neat, non-threatening smile, and let the man make his excuses. 

Steve would have to wait until the question and answer session was over before sneaking out. The previous Secretary had demanded that he stay until the end of whatever event he was meant to be supporting, but his likeness in photographs had a way of making his displeasure known after the fact. Fury found Steve’s photographs entertaining, but there was no denying that images of him growling at well respected individuals had not been appreciated by the wider public. Steve had since been given permission to wander off when he saw fit.

Tony’s launch was a veritable ‘Who’s Who’ of relevant warlocks. Fury was in attendance, and Coulson was filling the place Hill usually took at his side. Wr Lehnsherr and Principal Richards were engaged in a small war over who could ask Tony the trickier question – Richards seemed determined to show up Lehnsherr, who in turn was ignored Richards and seemed focused on trying to trip Tony up. Wr Storm, the headmistress of Aconite Grove, was watching them with quiet exasperation. James Rhodes, the longarm chaser of the Eastern quidditch team, was telling a young and pretty reporter some story of his school days with Tony. The reporter kept glancing in Steve’s direction, and Steve carefully moved across the room and inserted himself in a knot of far more interesting (and far less approachable) people.

“Mister Stark has a point,” Reed said hotly. “There have been very few true advancements made in magical research in recent times, and that can be traced to poor structure of tertiary-”

“You really think that this boy of all people knows more about unlocking the secrets of magic than the warlocks who are masters of such?” Wr Lehnsherr said contemptuously. 

“Are you suggesting that his education at Delmars may have been lacking?” Coulson asked, looking the picture of innocent enquiry. 

Wr Lehnsherr ignored Coulson completely. “You really think a squib, a _Muggle educated squib_ is the right person for this undertaking?” he asked of Richards.

“I think,” Steve said, surprising himself with the sound of his own voice. It was loud and clear, and made all other chatter in the room halt. “I think, that given the mess that the last generation got us into, perhaps we shouldn’t be afraid to knock them off their pedestals.” 

There was a long pause, and Richards broke it with an exasperated tone to his voice. “It’s foolish to deny that magical research is far more reliant on the mind than the wand, so to speak. Given the complex nature of the research that Stark is talking about, it would be quite fitting if the next recipient of the Order of Merlin turned out to be a squib.”

“Oh, he’s not a squib,” Tony said flippantly. Heads across the room turned to him, eyebrows raised in surprise. Tony revelled in the attention for a long moment, before elaborating. “He’s a werewolf.”

Steve felt his face flush. He suddenly knew why he had been invited. He had thought it had been to ensure that he’d keep his opinions on sourcery to himself (nothing shut Steve up quite like people wanting to write down his words). But no, it was much simpler than that. 

He was the familiar face that reminded people that werewolves could be an asset, that beasts could live among beings without tearing them to shreds. Children were still being taught about the Greenland Campaign in school. The ‘Howling Commandos’ comic books were still wildly popular. Every time someone wanted to tighten the leash on werewolf rights, Steve found himself getting drawn into the debate. “ _But look at Captain Rogers_ ,” people would say. “ _He turned out alright._ ” 

As if they knew the half of it.

Heads in the room were turning towards Steve, and he kept his eyes locked on Tony, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Oh, not _him_ ,” Tony said, waving a dismissive hand. “Though if we need any heaving lifting done, I might give you a call.” Tony reached over and patted Steve on the bicep. “No, I managed to secure the services of a friend of yours though.” Tony gave Steve a warm grin, like it was all some kind of pleasant joke. “You remember Doctor Banner, right?”

Steve’s insides went cold.


	7. Sangfroid

Bruce had expected there to be some fallout from Tony’s big announcement. Bruce would have liked to have skipped the announcement-making altogether and gone straight into the research side of things. Tony had labs and soundproofed rooms and restricted areas where no one could go. Such facilities had been a large part of why Bruce had agreed to join the project. 

But Tony wanted everything to be out and in the open, wanted to get as much excitement drummed up as he could. Tony understood how the business of such things worked. Bruce had been hired because he understood the science of magic. Bruce, as the brains behind the project, had quietly refused to turn up to the theme launch and had locked himself inside his office, waiting for the deluge.

He hadn’t expected the first correspondence to reach him to be a sparrow from Phil. Closer inspection revealed that the bird had deep red eyes and bronze feathers in place of brown ones. Phil had been cross-breeding again. The note was short and to the point, written on the back of a Kneazle Burger receipt.

_You could have told me._

Bruce grimaced. He and Phil had been friends for years, since they had both worked for the government, and Phil had been trying to get him a job at Warburtons for nearly a decade. Trying without much luck, as Bruce refused to apply for the jobs or set foot inside the school, and had an eerily accurate sense of when Phil was planning on springing an interview on him. 

_Didn’t think it would happen_ Bruce scrawled under Phil’s message. He refolded the slip of paper and held it out to the sparrow on the tip of his finger. The bird took the message in its beak and was gone in a small flurry of black and bronze.

Bruce sighed and stared at the coffee mug on his desk. Phil had a matching one – a white Howling Commandos mug, decorated with an illustration of Captain Rogers that transformed in accordance with the lunar cycle, with public holidays, and sometimes just when it was bored. Phil had been a big fan of the Howling Commandos in his youth. Bruce had a far more recent interest in them.

Bruce had worked for the Department of Unexpected Outcomes for a few short months. Before that he had been a Returns Officer for the Improper Use of Magic division – whenever an item was cursed, charmed, or transfigured with malicious intent it had to be returned to its original state. Bruce had mainly worked on goods that had been transfigured for smuggling purposes – priceless jewels that had been disguised as worthless trinkets, dragon eggs that had been turned into designer shoes. Often the prosecution of smugglers was entirely dependent on the true nature of the items being revealed. It had been a high pressure environment to work in, but Bruce had loved it.

Then Bruce had taken some time off and written a dissertation on the elasticity of the natural form and specific pattern of malleability that spells provided. He had been awarded the title of Doctor for his work, which was a rare privilege for someone as young as he had been. And then he had been put on Project Snowflake.

While fighting sourcery in Greenland as part of the Sorcerers’ Strike Reserve, Captain Steven Rogers had been mauled by the werewolf, Schmidt. Horribly wounded, he had been left to die. Wr Carter had found him while he was unconscious and healed him to the best of her abilities, casting a charm to hold his skin together until he could be moved to safety.

Many held to the theory that the mix of healing elements entering Captain Roger’s system at the same time as the aggressive wolf’s bite had been flooding his tissues had caused one of the most curious mishaps in modern magic. Others, who were more familiar with sourcery, believed that it had been an innate reaction in the charged environment to bloodshed. Sacrifice was, after all, the oldest form of bartering with the balance. Whatever the cause, the end result was that Captain Rogers lived. The wolf’s bite had taken hold of his body. The years of childhood illness and the ravages of war had been stripped away, leaving behind a body that was bursting with vigour. 

Steve Rogers didn’t scar. Didn’t fall victim to the ill-health that was associated with lycanthropy. Didn’t age.

It was utterly fascinating. Rogers had kindly agreed to assist in any and all reputable research into what had happened to his body. It was no secret that he wanted a cure for his furry little problem – after all, who would _want_ to be a werewolf? But Bruce had been surprised to learn that the apparent immortality was also unwanted. 

It all came down to Arithmancy – there was a balance to all things. It was an old belief that one sorcerer’s eternal life would be built on the early deaths of those around him. Bruce had always held such a view to be ignorant and old-fashioned, and had tried to reassure Captain Rogers that he need not feel any guilt as to his situation. The Captain still looked to be in his late twenties, and Bruce had felt oddly paternal towards him for the few weeks they had worked together. Rogers had looked at Bruce with tired, blue eyes – the frayed stare of a man who had outlived too many friends. Bruce had avoided personal topics after that.

They had been making progress. It was complex magic in Rogers’ blood, unpredictable and twisting. There was a raw power there that explained why Rogers had become so formidable on the field after his accident. Before, he had been a tactician and a sprinter. After, he was the leader of the charge, muscle and flame and fang. There was so much potential to do good in unlocking the secrets of his transformation. Rogers’ blood had looked like it would be such a gift.

And then there had been an accident. A stupid little stumble. A broken vial and a cut hand, and that consuming little puzzle of magic finding another host to invade.

While most of the side-effects had stayed with Steve, Bruce fell victim to the monthly change. He no longer had to worry about the seasonal influenza that had made his winters miserable, which was a small blessing. But a lead researcher falling victim to the very curse he was supposed to be curing had confirmed that research into such things was simply too dangerous. Project Snowflake had been shut down. 

Bruce had been drifting since then, paying his bills with the small scraps of work that came his way. Transfiguration remained his strong suit, and he was often called by families who couldn’t afford healers when a spell went awry. It could have been worse. He slept in a basket once a lunar month, and no one was interested in letting him near serious magic again, but he had rarely starved and darned socks kept his feet just as warm as new ones. 

Then, just as Bruce had finally accepted that he would never be able to untangle the secrets of the wolf’s bite and find a counter-curse, Tony Stark had invaded Bruce’s life with more energy than a billywig. Tony Stark, with his grand gestures and his large fortune and his complete lack of self-preservation. 

Tony Stark, with a desire for knowledge that almost matched Bruce’s own.


	8. Stargazing

The observatory had been a dark, stuffy room, packed with warm bodies nodding off to sleep. Many of the attendees had chosen the lecture because it ended just as the final drinks-and-nibbles of the evening began. Thor had attended because his mind had been on the stars of late. 

He had been pleasantly impressed with Lady Foster’s talk. Of the two princes, Loki was the one who found Muggles and their science so engrossing. Thor generally had no patience for inaccurate half-truths masquerading as reality. But Lady Foster’s presentation... Thor suspected that no Muggle had ever so accurately divined the dance of celestial bodies. Foster had been able to indicate the path of comets in other solar systems, the arc of a meteor shower so fine that it could not be tracked with telescopes of glass and brass.

It had been revealing. Suddenly, Thor had seen his brother’s fascination with potential. With the lenses and... _computers_ of Muggle scientists, star charts and planetary maps could be refined. Such knowledge, in the hands of Asgard’s soothsayers, could aid his father’s care. Perhaps even end his illness. And yet Lady Foster had spoken of such things as if they were boring commonalities. The real art of the science of cosmology, she had said, lay in the interpretation of data.

Thor stood at the edge of the crowd in the atrium. Lady Foster was surrounded by sleepy men with drinks in their hands, chatting idly to her about rockets and photographs and other such follies. She was a small woman but she had a strength to her posture that put Thor in mind of Sif, whose countenance in the depths of exasperation was composed and efficient in a way that Thor himself had never mastered. 

He waited until Lady Foster’s smiles grew tight and weary, and then navigated his way through the crowded foyer, his large frame convincing people to make way for him. “Lady,” he said with a deep incline of his head as he reached her side. “Your talk was most illuminating.”

“Thank you,” she said, turning to face him. Thor could see that she was eager to escape her previous conversation, and that he would merely be a stepping stone to more invigorating discussion if he proved to bore her.

“Please,” he said, “could you tell me of your intentions?”

Lady Foster seemed startled. “My..?”

“With your data,” he elaborated. “The detail of the information you displayed this evening was most impressive. I am curious as to your background, how the stars apply to your research.”

Lady Foster seemed taken aback by his words – English was not Thor’s first language, or even his second, and Loki had often teased him about the conspicuous nature of his turn of phrase. “You’re one of those religious people, aren’t you?”she said at last.

Thor laughed loudly. “No, my lady. I am an amateur astronomer myself,” which was a neat enough way to describe his family’s debt to astrology. “I enjoy the beauty of planets and the shapes of the stars. I fear that I am far too ignorant to deserve an audience with you,” he admitted, and her expression softened somewhat in order to convey her pleased embarrassment, “but I would very much like to know what higher learning can be found in tracking such things.”

“Well,” Lady Foster said after a moment’s consideration. “I’m not sure I can condense it into polite conversation. But, essentially, we’re hoping to identify the fabric of the universe.” Jane smiled at the way Thor’s eyes lit up, and indulged his questions with good humour and a fine vocabulary. 

Physics was not Thor’s area of expertise – indeed, many of the problems she mentioned in passing were quandaries that he had never encountered before. But Jane had devoted herself to uncovering the mysteries of the planets, and Thor couldn’t help but feel that their shared field of interest had laid a connection between them. He was glad to see a familiar slice of green moving through the crowd around them. Thor found Jane delightful, but he knew there was one person who would be engrossed by her theories.

“Brother,” Thor called, reaching out and snagging Loki by his sleeve as he passed, “you must make the acquaintance of Lady Foster.”

“ _Doctor_ Foster,” she corrected him in a sharp tone.

Thor’s smile fell at once, and he gazed down at Jane with upmost sincerity. “Forgive me, Doctor. I assure you that I meant no offence – in my country, Lady is a noble title bestowed only upon those who are leaders in their field.”

“It is not exactly equivalent,” Loki embellished with a bored lean to his voice. “But neither is it a dismissal.”

Jane stared at Thor for a long moment, then allowed him a twitch of a smile. “Your apology is accepted. Mister?”

“Odinson,” Thor said, taking her hand. He considered kissing the back of it, but was aware that the courtesy may not have been appreciated. “Thor Odinson. And this is my brother, Loki.”

“Charmed,” Loki said, without looking up from the seminar guide.

“It was a pleasure meeting you both,” Jane said, with another of her brief smiles. “And while I did enjoy our conversation, I’m afraid I must be going. I have an early flight for the next leg of my tour.”

“And where will you be visiting next?” Thor asked keenly.

“Heading back home,” Jane replied. “A university lecture in Chicago and then a fundraiser presentation in New York.”

“I wish you success in these lectures, Doctor Foster,” Thor said, finally releasing her hand. “And safe travels. Farewell.”

Jane gave Thor a bemused look, and wished him goodnight. He watched her as she walked across the room, collecting her collaborator as she went. She turned and looked back at him before she reached the exit, and Thor beamed at her. She gave him a more sedate smile in return, and then she was gone.

“Please don’t tell me you’re following her,” Loki said with a bored tone. “Mother will be upset if I return home alone.”

“You won’t,” Thor said, clapping his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “You’re coming with me!” He quickly filled Loki in on the substance of Jane’s work, the potential that it held. “It will enthral you,” Thor assured his brother. 

Loki appeared to be ignoring Thor’s words, but Thor could tell by the way Loki’s gaze flickered around the room that he was considering this new information very carefully. He rubbed his cheek absently, a new habit of his that indicated deep reflection. “New York, then,” he said at last, stepping away from Thor and striding towards the wide double doors that led outside. “Fine.”

“So easily?” Thor asked, matching his brother’s speed with a long, easy pace. “Are you suddenly enchanted by this countryside? Just this morning you were complaining of the climate.”

“You misunderstand me, brother,” Loki replied. He twisted the seminar guide in his hands, and with the crackle of paper condensing into parchment it traded places with the issue of _Transfiguration Today_ that had been sitting on Loki’s travelling case that afternoon. “We are heading to New York on other business.” He looked up at Thor with a sharp grin, and tapped Thor’s chest with the magazine. “I need to see a man about a dog.”


	9. Navel-gazing

The country had become increasingly concerned over the past years as to the health of its king. Thor would inherit the throne when Odin died, but the duties of holding court would be split between the two princes. Queen Frigga, it was widely agreed, would continue to run the country to her satisfaction through the princes for many years to come.

But there was no denying that the king’s ill-health was taking its toll on the kingdom. Asgard was largely removed from the world, including the magical subset. The magic they used was old and strong. 

Loki was amazed that the sorcerers in the lands below them could perform magic at all with the small sticks they flourished. And they had them made by other people. It was a wonder the twigs worked at all. Loki’s own staff had been carved by him from ash. It was his second, as the first had been broken in battle with trolls. He had read in a book of wands from the South (almost everywhere was South of Asgard) that many of them had cores derived from a magical animal. It was understandable, entombing a sacrifice within the wand. But surely it must make them temperamental? It was all very curious.

Loki was a conjurer by nature – he could call something up from nothing, and make one thing look entirely like another. He could walk in dreams and twist memories, and in such ways could apologise for his mistakes by smoothing away the pain they caused. But he was no sourcerer. Thor was the one who could pull raw magic from the earth and the sky. Thor was the crown prince because it was he who could feed the enchantments that kept the kingdom safe. 

Before Thor’s fifteenth year, when he had first called lightning down with his temper, there had been a chance...

Loki had spent more time in the world than his brother. He had long ago learned to slip through the enchanted boundaries, and had made it his passion to learn about the other, strange cultures below the lines of the kingdom. What had started as curious insolence had turned into an asset – because Thor would become king, but Loki was the one who knew how to move through the world without attracting attention. Loki was the one who knew how to seek out new knowledge to answer old questions. With his father’s health fading, it was Loki who had suggested that they see if the world held anything of value.

And it had been good to spend time with Thor. Loki was aware that they had been drifting apart. Thor had such great responsibility upon his shoulders, had so much to discuss with his warrior friends. Loki busied himself with the soothsayers and the world beyond, and less and less was he being dragged back into the warmth of familiar faces by his protective older brother.

Such things could be changed, however. Loki knew that he was almost as guilty of neglecting his brother as Thor was of forgetting him. They had spent so much time together as children that they were unsure of how to regard one another as adults. But Thor had still come with Loki to see this showcase of Muggle sciences, and if that meant that Loki had to pretend to listen to his brother waxing lyrical about some petty Muggle woman, then so be it. He made absent noises of agreement as he undressed, used the sounds of running water as an excuse to tune his brother out. Facing the mirror, foggy as it was around the edges, he allowed his mind to return to a consuming worry.

Loki stared at his reflection, stroking his cheek. It appeared smooth and unblemished, but he could feel ridges running along the skin. He traced the unseen lines. It put him in mind of the scarification seen on the giants, but Loki had never encountered such treatment in his life. Was it a trick of the light, or had his skin gone beyond pale? The shadows about his face seemed dark and cool, the sweat on his brow sparkling like snow... 

No, it must be the unfamiliar shine of electrical light and nothing else. Surely if he were unwell it would have been noticed at home. And if it were merely some kind of reaction to being away from the familiar power of his homeland then he would have certainly encountered it on one of his previous journeys. But then, Odin’s hand had always been upon his shoulder in the past. Now, with his father so unwell, charms and enchantments were starting to fray back home. 

Perhaps even spells on Loki himself.

Loki frowned at his reflection, and his face seemed as familiar as ever. It irked him, that there was some hidden quality, a trick hidden inside the trickster. But it would not remain a secret for long. There was a man in New York who was an expert at transfiguration, who had the power of a thousand wands behind him. Loki would visit this Doctor Banner and convince him to reveal the truth of his condition. 

Loki knew that such a secret would never be uncovered at home, where his father’s spells held everyone so tightly together. And he knew that if he were sick or disfigured, then it was better that the truth be revealed while their father was still alive. He would be able to guide Loki, to explain the truth to him. Perhaps there had been some accident?

The important thing was that it be done with haste. Because, regardless of what he may find as he strode across the globe, the truth was that his father was dying. Thor would take the throne, and Loki knew that his brother would need him. 

Loki had inadvertently vexed his family so much in the past. But those times were behind him. His jealousy of Thor had waned and faded. It was time for him to step up as the second heir and dedicate himself to the best interests of Asgard.

Odin still had a few years left. There would be time for Loki to make him proud.  
 


	10. Old Friends

Steve dropped his bag as soon as he was inside his apartment, and then kicked the door closed. He’d pulled his robes off and stuffed them into a duffel as soon as he’d escaped from Stark’s circus. Then he had walked through the busy streets of New York. Starting at midtown and taking the time to wind through Central Park. There were unplottable areas there, little pockets of magic that served as reserves for the magical beasts that otherwise would roam the city. The enchantments felt cool against his skin, and calming. He always wondered if he liked those areas because he was a beast himself. Maybe there was something in the enchantment designed to make animals feel safe and placid. To make them slow and stupid and safe.

Then he’d walked South. Through busy neighbourhoods and into poor neighbourhoods, and further on into bad neighbourhoods. His apartment building was populated by a mix of warlocks who had nowhere else to go and Muggle squatters who were too out of their minds on drugs to be affected by the wards. Steve took the stairs, because the lift hadn’t worked in decades, and had felt nothing even close to relief when he’d finally crossed the threshold into his den. There was blood on his doorhandle – someone had tried to break in while he was away. Next full moon, he promised himself. Next change he’d scare the scum out of the building and right back to their mothers’ skirts.

He pulled his khaki tie off and rolled it up, placing it on the small shelf below the mirror in the hall. He stared at his reflection, forced some of the tension out of his face, and sighed. “Cheer up,” the mirror told him sternly. Steve gave it an unimpressed look.

“When did you get back?”

“This morning,” Bucky replied, his thin and silvery form stepping out of the wall. 

“You’re meant to be on holiday.”

“I went,” Bucky said with a shrug. “I holidayed. But I’m not going to lie to you, it was kind of dead.” He grinned at Steve, never tiring of the old joke. 

Steve shook his head, and walked through his small apartment, unbuttoning his uniform shirt. “You know, you could have stuck it out for the rest of the week. It’s not like it’d kill you.”

“You don’t know that,” Bucky replied, drifting after him. “I could have died of boredom. How do you even bury a dead ghost?”

“Who said anything about a burial?” Steve retorted. “I’d leave you floating over my coffee table and use you to cool drinks in the summer.”

“That’s harsh, Steve. Decades and decades of friendship, and you’d use my memory to help cut down on your electricity bill.”

“Considering how bad you were at paying bills when you were alive, I figure it’d be a fitting tribute to your memory.”

Bucky snorted. “You should have come,” he said, leaning over the kitchen table and reading the front page of the newspaper. “There was a dame there about your age.”

“My physical age, or my actual age?” Steve asked as he pulled his uniform shirt off and put it on a hanger.

“Both. She was a sweetie. Couldn’t dance to save her life. Literally, in fact. You’d have gotten on great.”

“How she feel about dogs?”

“Allergic in life, but I figure that won’t be a big deal now.”

Steve shook his head. “Well, I’m sorry I missed out on meeting her.”

“That’s okay. I showed her a good time on your behalf.”

“I bet you did,” Steve replied dryly. He cracked open a bottle of water and leaned against the counter drinking it. The tap water in the building was undrinkable to most, and while Steve’s body could fight off most things he figured that water that didn’t taste like sewerage was one luxury he could indulge in. His belt was on the counter, his boots were unlaced. He was down to his undershirt and yet even with Bucky in the room his skin still felt hot and sticky. “You didn’t have to come back, you know.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bucky replied, returning his attention to the newspaper. “Hey, have you done the crossword yet?”

“It’s not full moon for another two nights,” Steve continued.

“Oh, has it come up again already?” Bucky asked, feigning surprise. Steve gave Bucky a long, unimpressed scowl. “So, how did that Stark thing go?”

“It was alright,” Steve said noncommittally. “There was food. Those tiny sandwiches.”

“He anything like his dad?”

“Yeah. I think he inherited the asshole genes.”

Bucky snorted a laugh. “So it was a good show?”

Steve looked down at the bottle in his hands, slick with condensation because he was already running a little hot. He dragged his palm over it, enjoyed the slickness against his skin. “He’s got Banner,” he said at last. Even without Bucky in his field of vision, Steve knew exactly what kind of look would be on his friend’s face.

“Well,” Bucky said. “That’s good, right? Good to know that Brucie’s got someone to look after him.” Steve shifted his jaw. “Not that he needs looking after,” Bucky added. “Look, that shit is not your responsibility, alright? He knew what the risks were. And if he didn’t then it’s his fault for being a dumbass who didn’t stop and consider the risks.”

Steve stared down at the bottle in his hands, idly picking at the label.

“Was he there?” Bucky finally asked. “Banner?”

“No.”

Bucky took a seat at the kitchen table – Steve always had one seat pulled out for Bucky – and propped his chin on his palm, his elbow hovering just above the worn tabletop. “You should go see him,” he said at last.

“I really shouldn’t.”

“Give him your seal of approval.”

“He doesn’t need it.”

“Go see Stark. Impress upon him the importance of whatever the fuck he’s doing.”

“Stark is an ass.”

“You’re an ass,” Bucky returned. Steve glanced up and frowned at him. “Don’t make the puppy eyes at me,” Bucky said sternly, pointing a finger at Steve. “I’ve seen your actual puppy-dog eyes, and they are terrifying.”

Steve’s frown twisted into something bitter, and he looked back down at the bottle in his hands and its shredded label. “You didn’t have to come back early,” he said at last.

“Yeah, I know,” Bucky replied. “But someone’s got to look after you. And if I’m going to be stuck with some goof who can’t dance anyway, it may as well be you.”

Steve flicked some water at Bucky, and his friend laughed as the droplets passed right through him.


	11. Change

Tony was glad that he was able to help Bruce with their research. While magic in and of itself wasn’t exactly his forte, he had earned exceptional marks in magical theory. Bruce had him helping with translating old texts from runes to something a little more friendly to casual perusal. And once they got up to the experimental design, Tony was going to be the one behind construction. Wands refused to do anything exciting in his hands, but he still had his mother’s eye for a good wood and his father’s passion for craftsmanship.

Bruce was checking over Tony’s translation, occasionally making marks on the white paper (Tony was against parchment on the principle that it was absurdly old-fashioned. He was also against regular paper, but like most warlocks Bruce was a little behind the times when it came to electricity and all of the exciting things that it offered). Tony had worried at his lip with each red mark that Bruce made, until Bruce had handed a page over and asked Tony to re-write the words indicated in block letters. His translations were fine, it was just his handwriting that left something to be desired. 

Tony couldn’t help wanting to impress Bruce. Despite fame, fortune, and focus there were very few warlocks in Tony’s life who weren’t either on his payroll or related to him. Or both. Bruce had been conditioned to feel the expected amount of shame over his condition. He tended to keep his head down and carry himself as if he was trying to avoid anyone noticing him. But he didn’t look down on Tony. He didn’t seem to care that Tony was a squib. And while Tony couldn’t ignore that Bruce was a werewolf – and not just any were, one who hadn’t been bitten, the third in a line of terrifying and abnormal wolves – he didn’t feel any fear or distaste for Bruce. He was fascinated. 

Tony had learned about Captain Rogers and the Greenland Campaign while he was at Delmars, though he’d known pieces of it beforehand. Herr Schmidt had been moving through the Northwestern Passages, intending to swarm down through Canada. The Greenland Campaign had hit his home base, cutting off the source of the magic that fed his troops. Very little had been written about Rogers’ transformation to a werewolf, allegedly out of respect for the hero. Tony suspected that it had far more to do with SHIELD keeping a lid on one of their weapons. As a result, the research into Rogers’ condition and its subsequent closure hadn’t been widely publicised. Tony had discovered Bruce through some old articles he had written on the nature of magic. Tracking him down had been another task in itself. 

“You’re staring,” Bruce commented mildly without looking up from the translation.

“When you change,” Tony started. He paused, noticing the way Bruce flexed his fingers and shifted his grip on his fountain pen. “I was wondering if you need anything? I mean, can I help?”

Bruce glanced up at Tony then, surprised. “No,” he said after a moment. “I usually head out of the city. Somewhere quiet.”

“But you can change here?” Tony asked. “If you had to?”

“It’s not advised.”

“Most of the advisements about werewolves seem ridiculous,” Tony replied.

Bruce shrugged. “Accidents happen,” he said pointedly. He was living proof of that. “If a werewolf does transform in a populated area, it needs a guardian.”

“I could do that,” Tony offered. Bruce glanced at him again, and Tony tried to look cool and aloof. It wouldn’t do to let Bruce know that he was actually quite interested in seeing him get all furry. It might count as some kind of workplace harassment thing. 

“Not necessary,” Bruce said evenly. “It’s not exactly something sane people volunteer for.”

“Are you like Rogers?” Tony asked suddenly.

“Can you be more specific?” Bruce replied. “We’re both men. Both warlocks. We both have two legs, most of the time.”

“Can you change at will?”

Bruce’s face shut down for a moment. He typically had a shy, thoughtful countenance. It was odd seeing the hardened quality that must lurk underneath. “I… no,” he said at last, before reaching over the table and pulling a rune chart closer. Tony kept watching him. Bruce had a great mind and was undoubtedly a skilled warlock, but he was a terrible liar. Bruce glanced up at Tony, and Tony dropped his head down so that his chin was resting on his crossed forearms. He smiled up at Bruce disarmingly. 

“It’s… I don’t,” Bruce started, dropping his gaze back down to the chart. “That not how werewolves work,” he said at last without meeting Tony’s eyes.

“You take the potion all cycle long,” Tony pointed out. 

He’d done his reading before hiring Bruce. The Wolfsbane potion needed to be taken in the week preceding the full moon, and during the period of maximum lunar exposure. There were theories that a lens could be built to concentrate the lunar energy of the moon at other phases of its cycle, which could in turn be used to catalyse the lycanthropic change. Tony had commented to Obadiah that he found it frustrating that no physical research into the theory had taken place. Obie had replied with a dry, “I can’t imagine why.”

“It’s technically a different potion,” Bruce said to his chart.

“So you can?” Tony persisted. “You can change at will?”

Bruce sighed and pulled his glasses off, scrubbing his face with one hand. Tony had been intrigued to see that Bruce looked more and more tired as the full moon approached. He had expected that Bruce would be full of energy, brimming with it as the moon fed the magical beast inside him.

“ _At will_ ,” Bruce said in a tired voice, “implies _when I want to_. Become a mindless, violent, slavering monster?” He looked over at Tony then, deep brown eyes dominating his face and giving it an inherently sad expression. “That’s not something I ever want.”

Bruce put his reading glasses back on, and set himself back to the task of reading through Tony’s translation. “I think it’d be pretty cool,” Tony said at last.

“It’s not,” Bruce replied.

“It could come in handy.”

Bruce huffed a laugh. “I can’t think of a single situation where turning into a furry rage-wolf would come in handy.”

“Well,” Tony said, pushing himself up off the table. “Never say never, right?” Bruce grimaced, but otherwise didn’t reply.


	12. Familiar

Phil was in Bruce’s rooms when Tony finally agreed that he and Bruce had done all they could for one day. He looked quite at home, and there was a hawk resting on the arm of the chair that he sat in. “How did you get in?” Bruce asked. 

“Through the keyhole,” Phil replied, like usual. Bruce was fairly sure that it was a joke.

“And what are you doing in here?” Bruce asked, setting his armful of papers and charts on his desk. His rooms consisted of an office, a bedroom, and a tiny bathroom. Tony had tried to give him more ostentatious quarters in Stark Tower, but Bruce had insisted on rooms with the smallest amount of window space. And Tony had already been so generous.

“We haven’t caught up in a while,” Phil replied, though his attention was largely focussed on the hawk. He was scratching it under one wing, and the hawk seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the experience. “I thought I could buy you dinner.”

“You don’t have to buy me dinner,” Bruce replied. “I have a job now.”

“So you can buy me dinner,” Phil compromised. “And tell me all about your new job.”

Bruce gave Phil a skeptical look. “Did Fury send you?”

Phil looked up at Bruce then. “Are you talking to me, or him?” he asked, shifting his hand to tug playfully at the hawk’s wing.

Bruce pressed his mouth into a line, and rapped his knuckles on his desk. The hawk snapped to attention, and gauged the distance between the desk and the chair. Phil offered him his forearm, and the hawk stepped gratefully onto it. Large birds were good for carrying heavy or important messages, but they were embarrassingly clumsy when they didn’t have the room to spread their wings.

“Thanks, Clint,” Bruce said as he untied the message from the director. He scanned over it, and then tucked it into his shirt pocket. “No reply this time,” he told Clint. The hawk cocked his head in acknowledgement, and then walked over Bruce’s desk to the window, where he paused for a moment before tipping out of it in a sharp dive.

“Clint,” Phil repeated thoughtfully.

Bruce looked at his friend curiously. “You didn’t know?”

“We haven’t been formally introduced,” Phil replied. 

Bruce did his best to ignore his friend as he set about tidying his desk, and then moved on to organising his affairs for the night to come. Phil sat in the armchair, slightly slouched down and with his hands laced over his stomach. His black slacks had a smear of pale dust on them from where he’d wiped his hand after fussing over Clint. He watched Bruce with polite curiosity, though the weight of his mismatched stare was a pressure against Bruce’s skin. His dark eye was ringed with blue, the colour charm he’d cast so he could move through the Muggle neighbourhoods unnoticed wearing off.

“You’re going to stare at me until we go get dinner, aren’t you?” Bruce finally asked.

“There’s a new buffet over on Sixth-and-a-half Avenue. I hear their salad bar is terrifying.”

“I can’t go out tonight.”

“You always transform better on a full stomach. It makes you less moody.”

“I’m going to head out to Black River,” Bruce said. “There’s a boundary there. I can be one with nature.”

“You hate being one with nature.”

“Practice makes perfect,” Bruce replied easily.

“You’re back in the city,” Phil said, gesturing to Bruce’s tiny quarters. “It’s smarter for you to test your environment out now than to wait until you get caught unawares and it goes pear-shaped.” Phil had a habit of having very considered and logical ideas. It was one of his more annoying traits. “Stark Tower is one of the hardest buildings to get into or out of in the city-”

“You still got in,” Bruce said pointedly.

“-And I’m already down as your guardian for lunar changes in this state-”

“I really should update that paperwork,” Bruce mused.

“-And you owe me dinner,” Phil concluded. “It’d be a bad idea not to stay the night.”

Bruce looked over at Phil with a frown. “And you’re going to sit here and rub my belly like the old days?”

“I brought some marking,” Phil replied. “Though I am willing to resort to belly rubs if you start chewing the furniture.”

Bruce stared at Phil for a long moment, and then looked down at his desk with a sigh. “Fine. It’s an awful idea and one day I’m going to bite you. But you know what? Fine.” Phil was a hard person to argue with when he had his mind made up – even if you won, you rarely remembered doing so.

“Great,” Phil said, pulling himself up and out of the chair. “I booked us a table for dinner.”

Bruce rolled his eyes and pulled on his robe. Tony had instructed him to buy some new clothes with his first pay check. They’d all been second-hand, because Bruce knew that it was folly for a werewolf to count on stable employment – he was planning on saving as much gold as he could before it all went to hell. His new robe was worn and comfortable, a little tattered around the hem but not noticeably shabby. For once, he looked to be on equal footing with Phil, whose own robe had a scorch mark at his thigh and little tears from some kind of bite at the end of one sleeve. 

Phil was still a good choice as a guardian. He had the skills to take down a werewolf if the need arose, and knew how to treat any bites until healers arrived. His career as an obliviator meant that, should Bruce be seen by any Muggles, Phil would be able to smooth the event over before it caused any panic. He was lucky that Phil was willing to look out for him. 

Bruce paused by the door of his rooms, and turned to face Phil who was standing just behind him. “You sure that Fury didn’t send you?” he asked.

Phil rolled his eyes, an interesting sight with his heterochromatic irises. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I don’t work for SHIELD anymore.”

“I know, I know,” Bruce said, leading the way out of the tower. But he couldn’t help but note that Phil had sidestepped the question once again.


	13. Unexpected

Pepper knocked twice on Bruce’s door before opening it. “Doctor Banner?” she called as she poked her head through. It had been a scramble to organise appropriate security for Bruce’s transformation the previous night, and she wanted to make sure the experience had been within the acceptable parameters. She drew up short when she saw a man leaning against Bruce’s desk, reading Bruce’s issue of the New Orleans Oracle. Phil Coulson glanced up at her and smiled. He looked tired but in good humour, and had a few coarse hairs stuck to his robes.

“Good morning,” Pepper said formally. “I was wondering if Bruce was awake?”

Bruce stuck his head out of his bedroom. His hair was wild and tangled, and Pepper could see some large bruises across his chest. A pair of sweat pants sat low on his hips – Bruce had a meaty frame, but always looked as though he’d recently shrunk a little. Pepper often had a nagging urge to sit him down and feed him soup. He was trying to pull on an old t-shirt, but his shoulders were too stiff for it to be a smooth process.

Pepper looked between Wr Coulson, still leaning against the desk and reading the paper, and Bruce, who was half-naked and entirely worn out. Worn out in a physical sense. Bruce’s embarrassment and Coulson’s nonchalance seemed rather condemning, and Pepper flushed. “Sorry to interrupt,” she said quickly.

Bruce’s eyes widened. “It’s not-!” he started.

Pepper smiled awkwardly and backed out of the room. “I’ll just be-”

“This isn’t-!”

“It’s _fine_ , Doctor Banner,” Pepper assured him, perhaps a little more firmly than the situation called for.

Coulson started smiling, barely containing his laughter. Bruce scowled at him. “You set me up for this, every time.”

“I like to think of these moments as my reward,” Coulson replied, his blue eye twinkling with amusement, before turning to the sports section. Bruce gave him a thoroughly annoyed look, and then managed to get his shirt on with a groan. Pepper heaved an internal sigh of relief, and told her inner public-relations manager to take the morning off. 

“There’s breakfast in the kitchen,” Pepper said. “Tony thought that, since you stayed last night...”

“Thank you,” Coulson said, pushing away from Bruce’s desk. “It’s much appreciated.” He left the room with Bruce’s paper tucked under his arm.

Bruce ran a hand through his hair, making it stick up in the front. It was speckled with grey hairs, as was the scruff on Bruce’s cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he said. 

“No, no,” Pepper said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come barging in.”

“I meant about staying last night. I shouldn’t have let Tony keep me back late.” Bruce had a long-distance broom propped in one corner. Werewolves were not allowed to apparate, and the Floo network rarely extended to the wilds that were suitably far enough from humans for a wolf to roam without being a risk. Being held back at work could be a very dangerous scenario for a werewolf.

“It’s fine,” Pepper said. “Tony’s fine with it. Your door has a lot of wards on it. It’s fine.”

Bruce gave Pepper an uneasy smile, and Pepper gave him one in return. As a Muggle-born warlock, she had missed out on some of the prejudices that were so very common in the magical community. The Americas were quite open-minded compared to other regions, since the community there was established by warlocks fleeing other countries for the right to practice their arts without persecution. There was a lot of lingering mistrust of Muggle-borns, and plenty of elitism. There was also fear. Fear of discovery, fear of sourcery, and fear of things that could not be controlled.

Pepper wanted to like Bruce. He was shy and polite, and had a sarcastic streak that came out when he forgot to check himself. His face shone sometimes with a desperate need to be liked. His life had been rough since his accident, and Pepper had a bad habit of wanting to fix broken things. But he was a werewolf. And Obadiah, who had spent his whole life in the wizarding world and knew a lot more about such things, did not like Tony keeping such a pet under his roof. Pepper had kept a professional distance from Bruce – she was Tony’s assistant and there was no need for her to go into the research space unless it was to badger Tony into signing something. Still, she found herself watching Bruce curiously whenever they wound up in a room together, wondering why Tony had chosen this person above all others to lead his team.

Tony trusted so very few people that Pepper felt obliged to trust Bruce as well. But then, when Tony made a mistake it was always a big one.

“Phil’s probably drinking all your coffee,” Bruce said, taking a stiff step towards the door. “Dog-sitting isn’t the best way to spend a school night.”

Pepper stepped into the room and held to door open for him. When she’d been at school there had been jokes about being able to tell a werewolf because they all smelled like flea powder. Bruce smelled like sweat, and dust, and a little bit wild. Not doggy, exactly. It was the smell of large animals and magic.

“You look like you need a long, hot bath.” Pepper said, smiling sympathetically at Bruce. 

“I’ll be fine,” Bruce replied awkwardly. Pepper glanced around Bruce’s rooms before she followed him into the hallway, and realised that he didn’t have a bath. He was in the small staff quarters. He was exhausted, and sore, and Pepper knew that Tony would be on him the minute Bruce showed his face.

“Here,” Pepper said, looping her arm around his. “Come up and use my bathroom. I recently came across a nepenthe bubble bath that will make your day.”

“But-”

“I’ll bring you up some breakfast once the water’s running,” Pepper said, steering Bruce towards the elevator.

“I really couldn’t-”

“And with you busy,” she added with a long-suffering expression, “I might be able to distract Tony long enough to convince him to run his company for a few hours.”

“Miss Potts-”

“Really, Bruce,” she said, squeezing his elbow, “call me Pepper.”

Bruce gave her an appraising look as they rode the elevator together. “Tony was right about you,” he said at last.

Pepper raised an eyebrow. “And what did he say about me?”

“He warned me that you were terrifying.”

Pepper couldn’t keep the pleased smile off her face. “I think he was right about you, too,” she said as the doors opened to her floor. Up close, Bruce wasn’t terrifying at all.


	14. To the Letter

Tony’s workshop was a very different place to his father’s. Howard’s space had been lit with flaming torches, had been a long and low room with benches strewn with carving tools and sandpaper. Wands should not be made with magic, Howard had always said. The charms used to turn the wood and insert the core could cling to the materials, could sometimes affect them for years afterwards. It had been Howard who had been able to think outside the box when it came to wand construction. 

While wands shouldn’t be carved from magic themselves, it was possible to establish machinery that could do much of the work. His construction line was powered by chips of an artefact. The Stark family was in possession of a stone that emitted a constant energy. That energy had been tapped and used to carve wands from lumber. It was still a hands-on process. Some woods were so temperamental that they could only be carved by hand. Cores had to be inserted manually to ensure they sat appropriately within the wood. Any markings and decoration was always added by hand so the integrity of the wand would not be compromised by a clumsy machine.

Tony had taken the industrialisation a step further by utilising electricity. Core insertion was much easier with the aid of power drills. Carving runes along a handle took minutes instead of hours with an electric engraver. And, most importantly, the wands he developed continued to be the best. _His_ wands. Not his father’s, or his grandfather’s. His. A lot of warlocks on the floor mistrusted Tony’s contribution, but he didn’t need them to wholeheartedly agree with the way he ran his company. He just needed them to do as they were told.

Pepper Potts was the exception to that rule. Pepper always did what needed before Tony told her to, and usually before Tony realised that the task needed doing. In his more indulgent moments of melancholy, Tony often reminded himself that Pepper was the best thing that had happened to him. This wonderful, smart, passionate, energetic, dedicated person who managed to keep Tony running. Obie often joked that she was the best decision that he’d ever made with regards to Tony, and he was right.

Pepper was the only employee allowed in Tony’s workplace, one of a handful of people who were allowed at all. Not that she visited him unless there were things that desperately needed his attention. She didn’t like to distract him from something she understood was so important to him. And Tony’s mind did wander and wonder when she was around him,

“You’ve got your high school reunion coming up,” he said abruptly, needing to fill the silence that had sat comfortably between them as Pepper went through her paperwork. Even without looking up from the wand he was working on, Tony could tell that Pepper raised an eyebrow at him.

“I’m meant to sort through your mail, Mister Stark,” she said playfully. “Not the other way around.”

Tony dallied for a moment, toying with the idea of changing the topic completely – just another one of distracted moments. But he was curious, and she hadn’t scolded his interest. “Are you going?” Tony asked casually, and then hurried to put the question into an appropriate context. “As your boss, I should probably authorise your time off. Organise some wild shenanigans while you’re away. Give you a nice mess to clean up when you come back.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” Pepper said, fond amusement and gentle sarcasm in her voice.

“I know you like to keep busy.”

Pepper shuffled some papers, sorting them into piles of things that needed to be signed. “I probably won’t be going,” she said absently.

“Why not?”

Pepper looked up at him and blinked, shifting her attention back to the topic. “Because I haven’t seen those people in ten years. Why would I want to see them now?”

“To show them how successful you are,” Tony replied. “That’s the whole reason these things are held, right?”

“You get in the paper so often that I don’t need to be in attendance for them to know what I’m up to.”

“Well,” Tony said after a pause. “It could be fun.”

“Standing around, making small talk with exactly no one I know? People didn’t talk to me at my graduation because I spent most of the year away, so I don’t expect they’ll be dying to catch up now.”

“I could go with you,” Tony offered without looking up from the pattern he was marking out on the handle. “I’m good at small talk. Mainly generating it, but.”

There was definite amusement in Pepper’s voice when she replied. “You want to come to my high school reunion?”

“All-girls’ school, right?” Tony replied, looking up at Pepper with a grin. She swatted at him with a sheaf of parchment. “It’s meant to be a thing, isn’t it?” Tony asked, picking up a carving tool and returning his attention to the wand. “That normal people do?”

Pepper raised an eyebrow at him. “Take their boss to their high school reunion so he can try to seduce the skinny, bitchy girls who make boarding school hell? Yes, Tony, that sounds exactly like something at a normal person would do.” Tony tipped his head in acknowledgement, and didn’t say anything. He busied himself with his work, putting far more attention into the aesthetics than a prototype warranted. “Why?” Pepper asked as she watched him. “Do you want to go?”

“No,” Tony said flatly. Pepper leaned an elbow on the workbench and waited him out. “It just got me thinking,” he finally continued. “If your high school reunion is coming up, than that means that mine will be coming up eventually. At some point. If I’m even invited, which I probably won’t be since they only gave me an honorary diploma.”

“They’re going to invite you.”

“Well,” Tony said, clearly not believing her and brushing the comment aside. “Either way, it’s going to be awful. I just thought it might be interesting. Going to a school thing that was actually fun.”

Pepper organised her papers into a neat stack. “Well,” she said at length. “I’ll let you know if I decide to go.”

“Don’t go on my account,” Tony said quickly.

“But with this research thing and all of the permits that need to be registered,” Pepper continued, as if she hadn’t heard him, “I’m going to be spending most of the night sending ravens to SHIELD and so on.”

“Is that the permissions thing? Because I can take care of that. You’ve been telling me to take of it for months now, so I guess I could do it for one night. I could be your personal secretary.”

“You’d be stuck with me all night,” Pepper warned him. “Fielding communications.”

“I can do that,” Tony said. “Spend the night with you. For work. I’d be the one working, for once. So you can have fun.”

“It won’t be fun.”

“I’ll make it fun.”

Pepper gave Tony a stern look. “You are not allowed to make it fun.”

“I can distract all of those mean girls for you,” Tony said with his most charming and photogenic smile.

Pepper pointed a finger at him. “If you’re coming with me then I get to veto who you ‘distract’ for the evening.”

“I promise to only have eyes for women who are too good for me.” He meant it as a joke, but the tone of his voice was slightly off, and their eyes caught for a moment.

Pepper looked down at the parchments and set a pen on top of them before pushing them over to Tony. “You’re going to hate it,” she said, her voice perfectly even.

“Right. So we’re agreed that I’m only going for you.”

“We might not have the time to go,” Pepper added, pointing out the obvious. Giving them both an out.

“We are very busy people,” Tony agreed.

Pepper glanced up at Tony then, her mouth curled into a sly smile. “And if we do go, then I’m flying us.”

Tony narrowed his eyes at the challenge. “Boss gets to pick the transport,” he said, invoking the old rule.

Pepper’s smile turned sickly sweet. “And you’ll be _my_ assistant, remember?”

Tony turned his gaze to the parchments before him, and finally picked up the pen. “We can negotiate the closer to the date,” he said at last. And by date he meant the temporal location of the event, not... Well, it could be, but. 

“Of course,” Pepper agreed easily, taking the signed papers and tucking them under her arm. She leaned close, delivering her parting words in a low, playful murmur. “But I’m still flying us.”


	15. Beasts of Burden

Loki walked to Stark Tower with a loose swagger. As he crossed the threshold between the Muggle world and the magical one, the shape of his suit grew fluid, dripping down in rivulets of the finest Italian wool to reveal the sturdy robes underneath. Soft leather and heavy silks, tiles of metal that lay warm and comforting against his skin. The handsome walking stick of black and silver grew and twisted and he slid his hand down the line or it, gripping his staff with the affection that came with the presence of something so intimately familiar in a strange place. He wore the robes of a prince and a warrior, and heads turned as he walked. 

He waited for the elevator, glad that Thor wasn’t with him. His brother was too unused to the way the sorcerers below Asgard had pressed the shape of their worlds into the Muggle mould. When their business was done, they would return to Asgard and not leave its safety again until Thor was king. And then, Loki knew, there would be no fun jaunts. Thor’s travels, few and far between, would be for negotiating peace and war. Hopefully his temper would be slowed by the weight of the crown on his brow. Hopefully Loki would have wise words and Thor would have the delicacy to listen to them. Thor was a hot-blooded creature, and their mother had sighed many a time that Loki’s cool logic should be able to temper that fire.

Doctor Banner had wet hair and a fleeting gaze when he and Loki met. He looked over the prince from head to toe, as if Loki were the strange one. They shook hands, as was the local custom, and Loki could tell from the first brush of his fingers against Banner’s palm that there had been no exaggeration in regards to his nature. How fitting that an expert in uncovering the truths hidden by magic would be so greatly misrepresented himself. Loki had wondered in the past what it must be like, having a monster locked away inside you. He stroked absently at his cheek as Banner drew circles and sigils on the floor, and tried to force his mind to other topics.

“I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to peel it all back,” Banner said when he straightened. He ran a hand through his hair and left a streak of chalk across his forehead. “You have old magic all over you, and even if they’re similar spells there’s going to have been such different processes in—”

“Doctor,” Loki said in a crisp, clear voice. “Please. Any assistance will be appreciated.” And he was already paying a handsome fee. If the beast could shed some light on his condition, it would be worth the shame of having to seek him out.

“Of course,” Banner replied, adjusting the sit of his glasses. “Step into the circle,” he said, gesturing to the hollow of clean floor in the midst of runes and ritual. 

Loki left his staff leaning against a workbench lest it interfere. Banner would need to unpick his father’s magic, and his own would merely confuse matters. There was already so much uncertainty within Asgard. It was time for clarity, for truth. Loki stepped into the circle and closed his eyes.

Loki felt strange and shuddery after the procedure. He sent Banner away – a hand on the man’s face to steal his words, replacing recent moments with a pressing conviction that he had other places to be. Loki traced the fingers of one hand over the back of the other, feeling the ridges of scars he had been adorned with since birth yet had never seen before. His inability to source made sense in this new context. Of course he was an illusionist – the beasts of the icy wilds were tricksters and liars the lot of them. Trusting an ice giant was a folly that would always lead to death, and so the All-Father many seasons before Odin had cursed the lot of them with red eyes that steamed in the snow like all of the blood they had shed. Had Odin been trying to outstrip them by creating a bigger lie? Would that be his final act as king – revealing that even a beast with the magic of Asgard could not trick the king? Or would it be Thor’s first act? Casting out the demon in their midst.

Loki pressed a hand to his face and struggled to compose himself. His skin was slowly returning to its usual, false colour, but the texture felt wrong to his own fingers and the colour of his veins would always remind him that his blood was at odds with his form. He heard footsteps approaching, and the final touches of a familiar costume snapped into place. Loki managed to look bored and aloof as a man approached him – solid and confident, a familiar face only because Loki had been keeping an eye on the workings of the Southern lands for many years.

“Obadiah Stane,” the man said by way of introduction, looking at Loki curiously. “You looking for Bruce?”

“He just departed,” Loki replied. “Loki. Of Asgard.” He was no longer Loki Odinson. He felt the magic over his skin shift uneasily as the knowledge sunk in. “And you are the wandsmith of Stark.”

“Well,” Stane said, giving Loki an assessing look that was not hidden at all by the shape of his smile. “Tony runs the place. I just keep it running.” He laughed at his own joke and Loki forced himself to twitch his lips in reply. He shifted his grip on his staff, trying to find the smoothness that his own palm had worn down and finding only hard, rough wood. “A staff,” Stane said, his eyes alight though he tried to keep his expression merely politely curious. “I’ve never seen one of those fully-charged. It’s a handsome thing, isn’t it?”

“A little outdated,” Loki replied, his heart still racing. Or, no. Not racing. It was a slow and steady pound. The world felt too hot and too fast for him. He pulled himself together, fought against the sheen of sweat on his brow. His staff was no longer the faithful channel it had been to him – staves were tied to identity, and as the sorcerer grew and changed their sympathies and allegiances to the natural connections shifted also. 

“May I see?” the wandsmith asked. “I know it’s deeply personal, but out of professional interest?”

Loki regarded Stane carefully. He held his staff forwards, though he didn’t loosen his grip on it. The sorcerer reached out to it, letting his fingers hover an inch over the surface of the black wood. “Is this opal?” the he asked. “Usually such an unstable stone. It’s considered unlucky, you know.”

“Luck is a matter of perspective,” Loki replied, and Stane laughed even though he’d paid the words no attention. Loki looked the man over as his staff was scrutinised, looked at the bravado and the false line of his smile. “What’s the expression?” he mused into the small place between them, “‘You show me yours and I’ll show you mine’?”

Stane looked at Loki with surprised amusement. Ah, yes, it was always different when it came to reciprocation. But the man was well bred and he reached for the wand holstered at his side. Loki grabbed his wrist when fingers touched wood, and he leaned close and _examined_. Pressing through layers of genial charm and skimming over the thud and rumble of blood and magic rushing through the body. Following the flow right into the heart and then curling up there and making it his home. Loki flexed his fingers over the man’s wrist, and felt all of the denied potential open up beneath his grip. A similar network of lies, left to simmer and roil. How sad, Loki thought. How suddenly familiar.

Loki peeled his hand away, and the sorcerer gasped, staggered for a moment even as the memory of what had unsettled him was wiped away. “I...” he said, and hesitated, casting around him for those lost moments. “It’s a good staff,” he said, clutching at the familiar concept. “Very good staff.”

“I shall need a new one,” Loki said in a level, calming voice. “Very soon.”

“Ah,” Stane said. “Another... like this? I see you’ve used opal. Usually unlucky, you know.”

Loki looked at his staff, the way the lines of gemstone in it caught and fractured the light. He looked at his own hand on the wood, the blue around his fingernails. A different self pressing through the thin skin his father had stolen for him. When Odin died, so too would his enchantments. Thor was already being trained in the use of the Stone of the All-Father for sourcery, an education he was unsuited for. He had none of Loki’s compassion for the balance; Thor’s respect for the blue cube was fleeting because it lacked well-informed fear. The stone that held Asgard together could so easily...

“No,” Loki said, his voice loud and sudden and firm. “I have something else in mind. A glorious staff indeed.” He locked eyes with Stane, and smiled at him – sharp and cold as frost. “And you, wandsmith, shall assist me.”


	16. Ten Sickles of Free Advice

Tony was pouring over an old rune text when Obadiah walked in. Sourcery had been so damaging in the past that most of the instructional texts with regard to it had been destroyed. Some had been saved in private collections, but they were so valuable that even all of the gold in Tony’s Gringotts account couldn’t buy them. The fact that it was _Tony’s_ gold possibly had some influence on the price, too. As a result, Bruce and Tony were going back to the original texts, great dusty tomes that were mostly metaphor. It was slow, frustrating work – translating the texts and then trying to decipher the actual meanings. But Bruce was familiar with such things and had an instinct for sniffing out the truth, and Tony had an encyclopaedic knowledge of magical substances that had been passed to him lovingly by his mother and grudgingly by his father. Between the two of them, they were making headway.

“How goes the research?” Obie asked, strolling casually through the room, his robe pushed back and his hands tucked into the pockets of his slacks.

“Good,” Tony said without looking up. “It’s slow going and it’s all theoretical, but I think we’re actually on to something. It’s old school though. Circles and candles and chalk-”

“And a sacrifice?” Obie asked, coming to a stop by Tony and leaning his hip against the bench.

Tony looked up at his friend with large eyes. “Arithmancy’s come a long way since then. Bruce is certain that-”

“Tony,” Obadiah said with a sigh. “Tony, Tony.”

“Obie, don’t-”

“I won’t,” Obadiah replied, holding his hands up in surrender. “I’m not saying anything. You’re a big boy and you’ve got your head on and I _know_ that, Tony. But be careful. I don’t want to see you get hurt by this.”

“It’s fine,” Tony replied earnestly. “Trust me.”

“I do,” Obadiah replied, smiling down at Tony. “It’s just, you don’t need to prove yourself.”

“Obie-”

“No, let me say this.” Obadiah looked down at Tony for a moment, then shifted his gaze to the rune text in front of him, taking a moment to choose his words. “You’re a great kid, Tony,” he said at last. “And you’re so smart. But I’ve seen you burning up for this for years. And maybe I’m being overprotective, but I’m scared that you’re going to burn out. A man is not a phoenix, and all that crap.” Obie ran a finger over the surface of the desk, disrupting the smeared lines of chalk from a diagram that Bruce had sketched out earlier. When he spoke again, each word was slow and heavy, weighted with concern. 

“I know how much you want this,” he said. “But you’re fine the way you are. You’re a squib,” Tony looked down at the sheets of white paper between his hands, a contrast to the musty yellow parchment. “But so what?” Obadiah continued. “You don’t need these assholes. You could become Secretary and they still wouldn’t invite you to their parties.”

Tony frowned down at his translation. Obie was right. Tony didn’t know if he was shunned because he was a squib, or if his squibness was just a convenient excuse. Obadiah had always done his best to keep Tony in perspective, to buck him up by reminding him that there were some people who just couldn’t be pleased. “I know,” Tony said at last. 

Obie nodded and patted Tony on the shoulder, his hand a heavy comfort through the thin cotton of a t-shirt advertising a Muggle band. “You could walk away from it all,” he said at last. “You could live like a Muggle. Be a ‘computer wizard’ like they said at that little school of yours.”

“MIT,” Tony said automatically.

“That’s the one. You’ve got a lot of strengths, Tony. Just... just don’t lose sight of who you are in all of this.”

Tony nodded slowly. “Okay.”

Obadiah stooped down a little, trying to catch Tony’s eye. “Okay?”

Tony finally looked up, and smiled, rolling his eyes a little at Obadiah’s concern for him. “Okay,” he said warmly.

“How’s Pepper doing?” Obie asked, changing the subject. “You’ve had her so busy lately that she hasn’t stood still long enough for me to say hello.”

“She’s good,” Tony replied. “She’s taking some time off soon.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. She has that school thing. Reunion.”

“Oh,” Obie said, looking pleased. “Good for her.”

“Yeah. I’m going with her, maybe,” Tony admitted, the words tumbling out in a rush. “She invited me. Or, I said that it sounded like fun and then she said that it would probably awful, so I said...” Tony trailed off, looking up at Obie who was shaking his head. He had a smile on his face that was fond but exasperated, the expression that so clearly said that he had no idea just what he was going to do with Tony.

“Tony,” he said with a sigh.

“I know,” Tony said, looking down and picking his pen up again. “It’s a stupid idea.”

Tony could see Obie shift, knew that he was biting off another gentle lecture. “You be careful with that one,” he said at last, in the amused voice he used when he knew that Tony was going to ignore him. “You’ll ruin her.”

Tony shifted his grip on his pen, flipping it around and tapping the end of it against the paper. Obie was right, of course. And Pepper had implied as much. He was her boss, and he knew better than anyone what a bad reputation could do to you. Pepper already got looked down on because she was working for him. Obie had warned him about that, too. Had let Tony know that he’d need to pay her well, because it would be a tough gig for her.

“Alright,” Obie said, pushing away from the bench. “I’ve said my piece, I’ll get out of your hair now.” He flicked his fingers, and set a familiar ruffling charm on Tony’s dark, scruffy hair. It was silly and familiar, and never failed to make Tony smile. When he’d been a kid, he had so looked forward to being a warlock and being able to pay Obie back for all of the years of ruffled hair. But Tony had been a squib, and Obie had gone bald anyway.

“You and Pepper have fun,” he said as he strolled out of the room.

“Thanks, Obie,” Tony replied.

“Anytime, kid.”

Tony looked back down at the runes he was meant to be translating for Bruce and waited. Waited for the cold slide of the charm falling apart over him. There were Muggles out there less resistant to magic than Tony. He shook his head and rolled his shoulders, trying to dust off the sad reminder that he wasn’t a warlock. He was lucky that Obie looked out for him, kept him grounded. There was nothing kind in false hope, after all. 

They were family, and Tony knew that Obie had his best interests at heart.  
 


	17. The Veil

Thor stood at the foot of his father’s bed, staring at the neatly made covers. Odin’s health had been declining swiftly and Thor had known that this day would come. He hadn’t expected to feel numb. He hadn’t expected Asgard to be in such uproar.

“It’s not the way he would have wanted it,” Sif said. She stood beside Thor, and while her words were flat and matter-of-fact he knew that she felt the loss of the king keenly. Odin had no daughters, nor had he treated Sif like one. She had been a warrior to him and Sif had thrived under his confidence in her. Frigga had taken fancy to the idea of matching Sif and Thor at one point but Odin had turned down the suggestion, knowing that the stately life of a queen would not suit Sif, and that the pair of them tended to escalate tension rather than relieve it. 

“I wonder if death is ever truly wanted,” Thor replied. While there were noble deaths, there was nothing heroic in death itself. Being killed in his sleep was indeed no death for a king, but Thor suspected that there was no death at all that would seem right for a father, not in the eyes of the sons left behind.

Loki remained absent from Asgard, and Thor missed his brother.

“Will we ride against the ice giants?” Sif asked. “The dragons in the stables are restless.” No doubt spooked by the cries of the banshees that lived beyond the walls.

The king had been stabbed in his sleep by a blade of ice. Loki would be able to tell Thor how they got in, how they slipped into Odin’s chambers unseen. Thor was a master of brute strength, but it was Loki who had patiently learned the arts of trickery and shadows.

“Not yet,” Thor replied, and he felt Sif shift impatiently beside him. He shifted his gaze from the bed of his father’s death, to the wide, glass-less window that showed the kingdom of Asgard glowing below and the bright lights of the stars above. He thought of the Lady Jane and her Muggle images of space. Could such a thing have been predicted from her star maps? He wondered if she resented the stars as he did, angry at the way they kept their secrets. “There is more here than meets the eye,” he continued. 

“There is murder under your roof and you do nothing to avenge it,” Sif replied, her voice sharp.

“There have been no celebrations to the North,” Thor answered calmly. No rejoicing of the ice giants. There would be celebrations to the South – the death of a ruler of Asgard was historically a fine excuse for feasting. “I want blood,” Thor said in a level voice. He wanted to stop feeling so numb and empty inside. “I want revenge for the theft of my father’s life.” He looked over at Sif then, needing her to understand. “But I do not want to unravel the peace of this region to get it if I do not have to. The king was killed, but I will not start a war until I know exactly whose head we shall hang above the gates.” 

Odin’s murder had not been foretold. There had been no caution and no warning. It was likely to have been a spontaneous crime rather than something that had been meticulously planned, but ice giants were not known for their stealth and it seemed strange to consider one of the monsters managing to sneak in unnoticed without planning and assistance. The ice giants were beasts with belief, and it seemed equally unlikely that they would launch an attack on Asgard without the heavens in their favour.

Sif looked at Thor with an unreadable expression for a long moment. “Perhaps the time with Loki has been good for you after all,” she said at last. “You are more considered than I would have guessed.”

“I look forward to him rejoining us,” Thor said honestly. Loki had disappeared from New York the same day that they had arrived, and the news of Odin’s death had come the following dawn. Thor had sent blind ravens in all directions for his brother and had returned home swiftly. He was certain that Loki knew of their father’s death. He was certain that Loki would have reason for his absence.

A large raven landed on the window sill and cawed at Thor. “Speak of the devil,” Sif said. It was Loki’s raven – smaller than most but swift and cunning, most befitting Thor’s younger brother. 

The blind ravens of Asgard were not like the grumpy birds Thor had seen during their tour of the Americas. They were large and harsh, raptors fed on the flesh of warlocks as they lay dying on the battlefields. Infused with magic and made so much more cunning than their brethren. The sorcerers of Asgard were taught the rough and crude language of the birds, though it was not polite to use it in public. As children, Loki and Thor had spent much time in the cold towers where the old birds made their nests, listening to stories of battles and betrayals. The ravens were possessed by scraps of those they feasted on, and they had bloody and conflicting perspectives. When Thor had returned to Asgard he had asked the ravens to go in search of Loki once more, but the old birds had laughed at him and no amount of cursing would convince them to leave their perches.

Thor bade Sif farewell and headed down to the bowels of the castle. He would go to Loki and perhaps his brother’s words and insights would shift the still numbness inside Thor’s chest and allow him to mourn his father as he should. Frigga had always told her sons that they would shape the future of Asgard together, and Odin had agreed that they would carve out new paths for their people. As Thor travelled deeper and deeper through the maze of chambers and basements, he became more confident that the sudden change of the world would make more sense with Loki at his side.

Thor trailed after the little wisps of Loki’s magic, familiar with the scraps of shadow Loki left behind when he disrobed himself of the spells that hid his form and allowed him to move unseen. He tracked Loki down to the very centre of Asgard, the chamber deep underground in which the Stone of the All-Father resided. Thor reached out to the heavy stone doors, and hesitated when his foot brushed against something lying across the floor. He conjured a small flame to light the familiar antechamber and stared with growing dread at the lines of wood that cluttered the doorway.

It was Loki’s staff, handsome and familiar and so reminiscent of Loki himself. Black wood that Loki had carved by hand and inlaid with the vein of opal he had pulled from a mountain on his first expedition beyond the walls of Asgard. 

The staff had been snapped into pieces.


	18. Aparecium

The chamber was a room of rust-coloured stone and pulsing blue light. Asgard was kept safe because the lands around it were so harsh as to dissuade any approaching armies. The first All-Father had placed the region under an enchantment of eternal winter, and the spell was tied to the still-beating heart of Asgard’s first enemy, the King of the Ice Giants. The heart had been encased within a casket of vibranium and pearwood. It was a morbid trophy, but it was the heart of Asgard. Soon Thor would be charged with making peace with the heart – it still burned with anger at its theft, and working the spell that kept Asagrd whole was as much about negotiation as power. Loki stood before the casket, staring at it, and the light of the stone twisted Loki’s shadow into strange, jagged shapes.

“Brother,” Thor called as he walked across the dark stone floor. “Your staff is shattered – have you been attacked?” The thought that ice giants could still be within the castle had terrified Thor, the idea that perhaps his brother could have been snatched from him as well...

“I have merely outgrown it,” Loki replied, his voice flat and level. 

“It is a time of change,” Thor agreed, approaching Loki slowly. His brother was in a strange mood and Thor did not want to trouble him further. “Though we are in a time of sadness,” he said, “I am glad to see you again.” 

Loki shook his head slowly, and the shadows cast by the casket leapt and jabbed at Thor out of time with Loki’s movements. “Where have you been, brother?” Thor asked softly. 

“I have been here,” Loki replied. “Watching.”

Thor pressed down the surge of anger that came with the knowledge that Loki had left him to cope on his own despite being within reach. He could understand the need to disengage from the tumult, and Loki had always been one to stand back and examine a situation before acting. “I am glad that you have been home safe,” he said honestly. 

Loki laughed, a hollow and sad sound. “I have been neither of these things,” he said. Thor took the last steps needed to draw level with his brother. Loki’s expression was troubled, the lines across his brow and the light of the casket making him seem older and more damaged than he had any right to be. While Thor had a reputation for a wild temper, Loki’s moods tended towards a destructive sullenness.

“How do you feel?” Loki asked suddenly.

Thor was surprised. No one had asked after his heart – his father had been killed; in a few days Thor would take the throne. He was supposed to be feeling obvious things. “I feel nothing,” he said at last, because lying to Loki had always been an impossible task in the long run. “I feel no sadness, no anger at his death. Only sadness and anger that my heart refuses to behave as it must.” Thor glanced over at Loki, but his brother had lowered his face and his expression was hidden behind his hair.

“How strange,” Loki said softly. “I had expected it to be the other way around, that you would be torn apart inside and I...”

“You are a cold being,” Thor said, nodding. “But you are not without heart.”

Loki snarled and turned away, stalking around the stone. His shadow flared and tore, little pockets of light shining through the darkness to dance on the stone walls. It put Thor in mind on a thestral’s wings, dark and rotting things that nevertheless allowed the winter sun to shine through in such delicate patterns. 

“I need your help,” Thor said over the sound of Loki’s boots clicking on the bloody stone. “Loki, you have cunning that I do not and I need you if I am to avenge our father’s death.”

“Surely you can solve this riddle, my prince,” Loki replied, his teasing nickname for Thor sounding bitter for the first time in Thor’s recollection. “Surely you have an idea of how it was done.”

“The assassin slipped in under Heimdall’s watch,” Thor said. “Moved through Asgard unseen. But how?”

“He wore a familiar face,” Loki replied. He stood opposite Thor, watching his brother’s face. “He would have been hailed as a friend, if he were seen at all.”

Thor’s brow furrowed. “The ice giants do not have such enchantments.”

“He would have been cloaked by one within Asgard.”

Thor was stunned. “But why? Letting such a creature within our walls would cause murder and mayhem. Every fool knows that!”

“Indeed,” Loki said, tilting his head to one side. “I cannot explain such actions to you, for I do not understand them myself.”

Thor pressed a fist to his jaw, considering Loki’s words. It was true that Odin had made many enemies – even within Asgard there would be those whose tears of mourning would taste false. Their mother had often said that the most dangerous enemies were those you were unaware that you had made. Perhaps there was a dissatisfied faction that had been angered enough to remove the All-Father from the throne. Or perhaps the scenario was simpler. Perhaps a snake had slithered into the city and hidden there for years as a friend, waiting for the right moment to strike.

“And they left the same way?” Thor asked. “Cloaked by enchantment?”

“If he left at all.”

Thor felt a chill creep over his skin. “How do we track him?” he asked. Talking to Loki was giving him purpose, and seeing the shape of events to come helped to hide the emptiness he felt at his father’s death.

“Track the skills,” Loki replied. “Who can move through your kingdom unseen, can slip past even Heimdall’s gaze? Who would have enough familiarity to walk into Odin’s chambers unchecked, and the influence to remove the memories of his presence after the fact?” Loki’s eyes were dark pits in the light of the stone. “Who do you know,” he asked pointedly, “who is good with a blade?”

Thor shook his head, trying to unknot the puzzle Loki had laid out for him. “You must guide me further,” he said plaintively. “The only person I know who can dodge Heimdall’s gaze is you.”

Loki held his hands out to his sides and grinned triumphantly at Thor. His dark eyes glittered and his skin seemed to shine like snow under the moonlight. It was a sick and twisted look, and Thor felt his world lurch as Loki’s admission sank in. “Such a cunning mind, has our king,” he said brightly. “I barely had to hold your hand.”

“Why?” Thor asked. “Why would you do such a thing?”

“Knowing what I am, why would I not?” Loki returned. He reached out a pale hand and lay it on the casket. Thor stepped forwards to stop him, knowing that the cold of an ice giant’s heart was harsh enough to make flesh turn to ice. Loki’s fingers turned blue, then his wrist. The armour of his robe became dusted with frost and then cracked. Loki brushed the ruined panels away and revealed the blue flesh of his forearm. Ridges were rising along his skin, the deep scars that were as close as the ice giants had ever come to art. Even their ideas of beauty were borne of destruction. The colour had travelled up to Loki’s face, and the familiar smile of his brother cracked and flaked away, leaving the cruel leer of a giant behind. His eyes were red and his skin was blue, but the neat lines of his white teeth remained the same, and Thor found his attention fixed on the oddity.

“I had long ago accepted that you would be king,” Loki said, peeling his hand from and casket at last and examining the revealed form of his fingers. “It is only in the past few days that I have truly understood what _my_ role is to be.”

“You are to stand by my side,” Thor said firmly, his voice harsh as it always was when he needed to force Loki to stop playing. “You are to help me rule, as we have always agreed.”

Loki smiled at Thor, a sad and pitying expression. “I am a monster and a murderer,” he said. “And yes, I will help you to be a great king. But not in the way you thought.”

“Brother, please.”

Loki shook his head. “We are not brothers. You need to understand that. We share no blood.”

“We have shed blood together,” Thor cried in response. “We are bonded.”

“Yes,” Loki agreed. His hand flicked through the air and Thor felt pain blossom just below his ribs. He fell to his knees, pressed a hand to his side and felt blood, felt the crawling cool of a blade of ice. “We are bound,” Loki continued, placing both hands on the casket and picking it up. He brought the casket down on the pedestal it had rested on, smashing open the casing with the force of his determination. Vibranium and pearwood scattered over the floor, and Thor watched dumbly as Loki wrapped both hands around the stone, around the still beating heart of the first king of the ice giants. 

Loki looked down at Thor, and gave him a smile that looked lost and apologetic. His eyes glittered red, and Thor hated his brother in that moment, hated his stubbornness and selfishness. “We each have our destinies to pursue,” Loki said, not unkindly, and then he disappeared in a flash of light and snow.

Thor sagged to one side, toppling over onto the stone floor that was already heating up, surrounded by shattered wood and warped metal. Loki’s blade had left a deep wound, but not a fatal one, and Thor lay on his side with his hand pressed to the hilt of his brother’s knife. The wound ached in a way that Thor could not put words to. He was angry and betrayed and sorrowful, and he closed his eyes in relief that the emptiness of the previous days had finally passed.


	19. Fizzlers

“She can look after herself,” Natasha said irritably as Clint rose up onto his toes again, peering over the throng of warlocks.

“I know she _can_ ,” Clint replied. “The question is whether she _will_.” Natasha snorted, communicating without words exactly what she thought of the topic of Clint critiquing anyone else’s self-preservation skills. “This has got to be the biggest bash in the world right now,” Clint continued. 

The streets between Muggle New York were packed with warlocks. Exams were about to start and so students had flocked to the city for one last weekend of indulgence. Planets had aligned and heralded interesting times (warlocks threw parties whenever anything aligned; Clint had once been to a celebration of ‘predicted consistency for the coming three years’ – there had been glowing jelly shots). And there had been murder to the North. While most witches and wizards couldn’t name the All-Father, there remained a kind of false-nostalgia for his lands within the community. “They do magic right up North,” people would agree whenever the Secretary of Sorcery passed any change that indicated some kind of social progression. “They know the old ways.”

Clint wasn’t sure what the big deal was about the ‘old ways’. If they’d been any good, they’d still be the ‘current ways’ at the very least. He scanned the crowd again, trying to pinpoint a familiar head of black hair in amongst all of the pointed caps. 

The street fair was packed with bodies, with people selling food and small fireworks, with fire-breathers and contortionists and the occasional grifter. There were sections that were roped off from the general public – places where the upper class rubbed shoulders and celebrities could sip imported gillywater without worrying about signing autographs. There were also large pockets of space that could only be entered with a specific charm placed on the warlock (for a price), which held small tasting buffets or bands playing music. 

Clint felt dirty and cramped in his human form, and longed to shift and find himself a perch on a windowsill or streetlight. But Kate had been teasing him about his expression being stuck in ‘bird-face’, and Fury had thrown a small sum of money at Clint and Natasha to have them wander around and break up any fights that may occur. That was a large part of Fury’s modus operandi – have SHIELD agents stationed visibly at the perimeter of events, and then a plain-clothes security detail to keep a lid on things, which kept the general population from grousing that the government was keeping too close an eye on them. 

And, as Natasha had pointed out, they lived in a shitty apartment building right on one of the main streets of warlock traffic. They were going to have to put up with the noise and bustle of it anyway, so they may as well get paid to do it and grab some candied doxies while they were out. And if it got Clint out of the habit of perching threateningly on the furniture, all the better.

It would have been a great opportunity to mingle and maybe touch base with a few of their other employers, if only Katie hadn’t disappeared. Natasha blamed Clint for adopting her, and Clint blamed Natasha because she was the one who had hired Kate to be a lookout for one of their jobs a year ago. It had been a one-off contract, and they’d been stuck with her ever since. Not that Clint minded having her around, exactly. She was sarcastic and rude, and always ate the last of his food, and made fun of him more often than anyone else would dare. But she could drive a car, and kept the first aid kit stocked, and had good eyes. (Good eyes for seeing, not good eyes for looking at. Not that her eyes weren’t without aesthetic value, it was just that Clint didn’t keep her around for her eyes. Well, he did. But not in _that_ way.) 

Natasha handled the heavies, Clint snatched the goods, Katie had the getaway brooms at the ready. Kate also had a habit of wandering off without telling either Clint or Natasha. She had a lot of potential, but she didn’t have the instincts for the work drummed into her yet. Maybe Clint got himself into trouble more often than was strictly advisable, but at least he always saw it coming. Kate was going to get cobbed a foul if she didn’t learn to watch her surroundings.

“There she is,” Natasha said, pointing to a cart that was selling wyrm-pepperoni pizza and chocolate-squash sodas. “She’s talking to your hawk-crush.”

Clint looked over and, sure enough, there was Katie-Kate talking to Phil Coulson. They seemed to be having an amicable conversation, though Kate was clearly more invested in it than Coulson was. He was keeping an eye on the crowd in the same way that Natasha was. Once an Unmentionable, always one. 

It wasn’t that Clint was lovesick or anything. He just appreciated a guy who was respectful towards birds. And Coulson had good taste in pastries and wasn’t shy about sharing them with any hungry hawks who happened to take up a perch in his office. And Coulson was smart and savvy and sarcastic and had nice hands. Maybe he was one of the better delivery recipients on Clint’s list. Maybe he was a little bit of a perk, even. 

Maybe Clint had made the mistake of asking Kate about him, since she’d graduated from Warburton Public a few years ago. Kate had gone out and bought a new notebook _just_ so she could scrawl ‘Clint + Coulson 5eva’ all over the cover. Natasha wasn’t much better. Clint had been scoping out new locations for a nest with increasing frequency since then. 

“Have you ever actually spoken to him?” Natasha asked.

“Not with words,” Clint replied, watching Katie and Coulson. 

“You mean you’ve never been you around him,” Natasha replied. They had very different relationships to their animagus forms. As far as Clint was concerned the hawk _was_ him, just with worse handwriting. He and Natasha had some similar themes in their pasts, but they’d responded to them differently. Natasha didn’t seem to like the reminder of her past that her animagus form provided.

Clint shot Natasha a warning look. “The opportunity has never exactly come up.”

“You should go introduce yourself,” Natasha said with a small smile. “Let him know that whatever Katie’s telling him about you is a lie.”

“What?” Clint whipped his head back around to see Kate and Coulson staring at him, Kate sparkling with mischievous glee and Coulson’s face as closed and stern as it was when he was teaching. “Shit,” Clint spat, and started pushing his way through the crowd. He was mere feet away from them when Coulson looked away from Kate, caught Clint’s eye, and gave him a simple nod of acknowledgement before disengaging from Kate and getting lost in a gaggle of warlocks as they passed.

“You,” Clint said, grabbing Kate’s arm. “What did you say to him?”

“We were just catching up,” Kate replied, twisting out of his grip. “Reminiscing about old times, discussing mutual acquaintances.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I pointed you out to him, let him know you were a good guy.” Clint waited for the rest of it to come out, his face stony. “He said that you and ‘Tash make a handsome couple.”

“ _Katie!_ ”

Kate smirked down at him, the heels of her boots giving her just a little height on him. “Oh, was I meant to correct him on that one? It’s just that you told me to stay out of your relationships and all that.”

“Not like it matters,” Clint replied, determined to be the bigger man. “He’s just part of my job.”

“He’s single.”

Clint groaned, and grabbed her shoulder. “Help me find him.”

“I’d love too,” Katie said, her voice dripping with sincerity. “But it’s really not cool for someone my age to be seen spending too much time hanging with old teachers.”

“Help me or I swear I’ll raid your drawers and do a panty-drop on Delmars.”

Kate scowled at him. “Well, since you’ve asked so nicely.”

Clint gave her a dark look in return, and then pushed away from her, twisting into a familiar form and flapping hard to get above the crowd.

“He said he was going to go annoy Stark,” Katie called up to him, her hands cupped by her mouth. Clint wheeled around overhead, and she helpfully pointed towards the charmed circle where the bigwigs were hanging out. Clint and Kate were going to have words as soon as he’d had a stab at setting things straight. Or, not-straight, should the interests of all involve parties align that way. She may have had a knack for looking after herself, but she sure as hell managed to shove Clint into the soup.

But then, as he gained some height from the crowd, Clint saw a rush of people running very fast. It looked like Fury had been right to have security on the streets. Catching Coulson would have to wait.


	20. In Loving Memory

Steve had seen Asgard, once. From a distance. It had shone like gold and opals, one point of brightness along a ridge of black ice and treacherous rock. It was no landmark – the source of the light always seemed to bend and shift. It was unmappable, untraceable, and impossibly beautiful. He’d lain on his back in the snow, watching the pinks and greens of the residue of strong enchantments dance at the edge of his field of vision. It was said to be one of the most memorable sights of the North, but Steve had no fond memories of it. He’d been busy bleeding out at the time.

It felt strange to be standing around with a flute of gillywater in his hand, smiling and nodding and posing for photographs to celebrate a death. It was unlikely that there would be any celebration when the new king was coroneted. Steve had heard about Odin’s sons years ago, when the Sorcerers’ Strike Reserve had been working with Northern enchanters to gather intel on Schmidt. Odin hadn’t helped Schmidt, but he hadn’t opposed him either. Asgard kept itself removed from worldly affairs. Steve felt that the only reason the deaths of its kings were announced was to keep it from fading into a myth.

He was pulled out of his thoughts by a starlet approaching him. She looped her arm through his and Steve bent his knees a little so they’d fit well in the frame. _Flash_. Photo done, and he was quickly abandoned for more sparkling conversation. A familiar pattern, and one that he had been tolerating for the past two hours.

“You going to drink that?” Tony Stark asked, appearing at Steve’s side. “Or do you just like holding it?”

Steve didn’t look away from his crowd watching. “A wise woman once told me that one should never circulate without a drink in hand, just in case one gets offended. I believe that was your father’s first wife?”

Tony smiled in Steve’s peripheral vision, a sharp expression that was softened a little by his messy hair. While Tony’s robes were always perfectly groomed, messy hair was something of a trademark – a contrast to the angles of his beard, his dark hair was kept tousled by the yellow designer flight goggles that he had a habit of wearing pushed up off his face, as though he were ready to leap on a broom at a moment’s notice. “Couldn’t say,” Tony replied. “Never met her.”

“She was definitely a character,” Steve said, forcing some fondness into his voice. “Howard have any kids with her?” Steve asked, knowing the answer and also knowing that Tony wouldn’t like answering it. If Tony wanted to insist that they talk, they could talk.

“None that I’ve met,” Tony replied.

“Hm.” 

“That’s why they split, actually,” Tony continued, a little bitterness creeping into his voice. “Dad wanted an heir. But I can’t expect you to remember all of that. It’s not like you two were close or anything.”

Ah, that explained Tony’s presence. Steve trawled back through his long memory and, yes, Howard had died around this time of year. Steve hadn’t gone to the funeral, but he’d watched it from a distance. A big, gaudy affair that Howard probably would have loved. Howard as Steve had known him, at least.

“I knew him a long time ago,” Steve replied.

“He never shut up about you. When he was reminiscing, I mean. Which wasn’t often.”

Steve sighed heavily through his nose, not letting his polite but disengaged smile falter. “What do you want from me?” he asked, cutting to the chase.

“Nothing,” Tony answered. “You don’t seem like a guy who’s great at paying out, anyway.” Steve shifted his jaw. “I mean, first I have my dad getting drunk on firewhiskey and complaining about the disappearing Steve Rogers. Now I’ve got Bruce under my roof and it sure doesn’t seem like you stuck around to help him out.”

“And how much have _you_ had to drink tonight, Tony?” Steve asked, finally turning his head to glance down at the other man.

“Is it true that you can’t get drunk?” Tony asked. “People say that nothing affects you, and you’re always standing around at these things. Stony-faced until there’s a camera on you. Do you even have feelings? Or did those bleed out of you too?”

“I can’t get drunk,” Steve said. Then he stepped closer to Tony, wrapped an arm around his shoulders. He felt narrow and lean, but compared to the bulk of a werewolf, so did most people. “Is it true you had to take your father’s estate to court?” he asked in a low, pointed voice. “Is it true that Howard left everything to his eldest son, instead of the one who was gifted with the Stark name?”

“My father was a narrow-minded ass,” Tony replied. A reporter sidled up to them, and Steve and Tony both smiled for the camera – wide, white smiles that were entirely artificial. _Flash_. Photo done. “You never really defrosted, did you, gramps?”

Steve squeezed Tony’s shoulder in a gesture that would look friendly and comforting from a distance. “Go and have your daddy issues somewhere else.”

Tony grunted and pulled himself free of Steve’s grip. “I’ll leave you to get back to partying with all your friends,” he snapped, and then stalked off into the crowd.

Tony was definitely a lot like Howard. All arrogance and demands. All big ideas and charming smiles. Howard had lived to a reasonable age, but he’d died wrecked and bloody just like everyone else Steve knew. Tony Stark, the world’s most self-destructive squib, seemed determined to follow in his father’s footsteps. Steve had never had the energy in him to care about Howard’s sons, and that wasn’t going to change just because Tony Stark was in a mood.

“Well,” a familiar voice said. “That went well.” Bucky materialised in the space Tony had left by Steve’s side. “You know, you could go easy on the kid.”

Steve took a gulp of his gillywater, grimacing at the taste. “You know,” he said at last, “why don’t you go haunt someone else?”

Bucky gave Steve a hurt look, but he glided off to join some other ghosts who were dancing a reel nearby. Steve deposited his drink on the tray of a passing waiter, and left the charmed area of the party. He kept his chin up as he walked through the wilder press of the crowd beyond, ignoring all of the partially-inebriated warlocks who called his name. If he was going to spend the night wallowing in the past, he was going to do it on his own terms.

He’d gotten as far as three blocks when he felt the ground beneath his feet rumble. Muggles around him exchanged surprised glances and made reference to earthquakes, but the hair on Steve’s arms was standing upright. He’d been in enough conflicts to know the feel of something very powerful hitting the ground. He turned around and sprinted back to the warlock sector. When he crossed through the barrier, the celebrations had become chaos.


	21. Starry-Eyed

Jane shifted her grip on her paper cup of coffee. She’d thrown away the little cardboard sleeve because the barista had spelled her name wrong when taking her order. Darcy had pointed out that, in his defence, ‘Jane’ and ‘Hot Geek Lady’ _did_ have some of the same letters. For some strange reason, going on a lecture tour and having to deal with patronising questions after her presentation and then men clutching her elbow or putting their hands on the small of her back during the mingling sessions left her feeling a little bit cranky in the face of unwanted sexual attention.

Her lecture series was officially over. She had another day in New York for sightseeing and then it would be back down to New Mexico and her shabby research facility. Darcy was studying in New York, and had dragged a whole row of friends to Jane’s final presentation. She’d gotten a standing ovation and a very enthusiastic chant of “ _Let’s go Einstein-Rosen bridge, let’s go!”_. 

“So, they liked the talk?” Jane had asked when she’d met up with Darcy later.

“Oh, we didn’t understand a word of it. But the pictures were pretty cool.”

Jane had tried talking Darcy into switching to an actual science degree – Darcy was good at running errands, but she still struggled with recognising the importance of making sure that decimals were in the right places. Darcy’s whole view on statistical analysis could be summed up as “Numbers, eh”. But she was a good summer intern, and weirdly enough had enjoyed her first summer internship with Jane enough to apply for the same position the following year. She was even talking about flying down over winter break. It was nice having another female around. It was great having someone on her team who would butt into a conversation without hesitation just to say “Actually, it’s not Miss Foster, it’s _Doctor_ Foster.” 

Jane kind of wanted to keep Darcy forever, but she was yet to find a research aid requisition form for ‘spunky sidekick’. 

“So did anything else happen overseas?” Darcy asked as they strolled along. She was wearing a pair of fingerless gloves ironically, and was completely free of coffee-related burns to her hands.

“Not really,” Jane replied, trying to sound bored. “Same old mix of mindlessly boring people and completely weird people.”

“Weird can be good,” Darcy replied.

Jane snorted. “Weird can be... you!” Darcy looked over at her, puzzled, but Jane’s attention was fixed on the man who had seemingly popped out of nowhere in front of her. “You! From the conference last week!”

The man turned to her in surprise, and then smiled. His blue eyes crinkled at the corners and he had the most perfect smile Jane had ever seen. It was an expression that made her feel so wonderfully important. “Lady Jane,” he said in his deep, rumble of a voice.

“Ah, yes. Thor, right?” Thor inclined his head in acknowledgement.

Darcy looked him over and raised an eyebrow. “Is there a steampunk renn faire in town that I don’t know about?” she asked. 

Jane paused to take in Thor’s attire and, yes, it was a little strange. There was the red cloak, the bands of armour around his forearm. He looked positively medieval, and the long staff with a hammer head attached to it did not help. People were staring, actual New York people. The more Jane drank him in, the stranger it all seemed. But she remembered her conversation with him previously. He was smart and attentive, and had shown real passion in the stars, in her work.

Thor suddenly whipped his head around to stare intently at a brick wall, and Darcy gave it a curious glance as if trying to pinpoint what had grabbed his attention. It was definitely weird, but there was a chance that maybe he just had dog-like hearing. He was too hot and charming to be a total weirdo. Jane was due for someone who wasn’t an asshole or a weirdo. “Forgive my abruptness,” he said in his overly-formal tone, “but the streets are not safe for you ladies.”

Darcy shoved her coffee at Jane, who suddenly had two scalding paper cups to deal with. “What? No, I have it covered!” She dug around in her satchel bag for a moment, and emerged victorious, her battered taser in hand. “See?”

“Darcy!” Jane hissed.

“What? It’s safe. This bag is mostly waterproof now.” She turned back to Thor and pressed the button on the side, making it crackle with charge.

“What a strange little casket,” Thor said, bemused and delighted. “You’ve harnessed lightning!”

Jane sighed heavily. Yup, this one was definitely a weirdo. “Uh huh, yeah,” she said, stepping daintily around Thor and jerking her head to indicate that Darcy should follow her. “You know, you’re right. We should be getting out of here. Go somewhere safe.”

“Do you need me to make this place a little safer?” Darcy asked. “My baby’s fully charged.”

“ _No_.”

“I regret that once again the crossing of our paths has been cut short, Lady Jane,” Thor said, catching her gaze with those blue, blue eyes of his. He was so damn pretty for an utter wackjob. “Alas, we were fated to meet during interesting times. I see great strength in you. May you venture through this time of transience with courage and fortitude.”

“Uh, thank you.”

Thor smiled at her, composed and contained, and still a little bit dreamy. “We are fated to meet again,” he said, and then turned to face the wall, his feet braced on the sidewalk and his staff gripped aggressively in both hands.

“Not if I take out a restraining order,” Jane muttered, shoving Darcy’s coffee back into her hand and grabbing her assistant by the sleeve.

“Waaaiit,” Darcy said as Jane tried to drag her away. “Thor, Thor. Where do I know that name?”

“I don’t care, so long as you know it from a distance,” Jane hissed. “They guy is obviously unhinged. Let’s get out of here.”

“Maybe he just has strong opinions about architecture?” Darcy offered. But she finally shoved her taser away and Jane let out a sigh of relief.

And then the wall Thor had been staring at blew outwards, a mess of stone and dust and rubble. The street was suddenly full of people dressed in strange long jackets, some with goggles on their heads and all of them with sticks grasped in their hands. Jane and Darcy had been knocked over by the blast, but Thor had kept his ground, standing still and ready like a statue of some coiled Viking warrior.

“The fuck was that?” Darcy asked, wiping ineffectually at the coffee she had spilled down her front. Jane grabbed Darcy’s sleeve and tugged at it, her gaze fixed about twenty feet above them where the head of some giant, horrible beast was swaying back and forth, snarling and howling in a way that sounded like no animal Jane had ever heard in her life.

“What is _that?_ ” she asked in return.

Thor threw his head back and laughed before charging forwards, swinging his staff in wide, heavy circles. Jane worried idly that he would hurt someone with such a dangerous weapon. Then Thor launched himself at the... the thing that was definitely not a dragon made of ice, because such thing didn’t exist, but could possibly be some kind of... giant, angry, flame-spitting arctic lizard? It was all too strange. 

And then Darcy cussed some words that Jane had never heard before as she clambered to her feet and rummaged around in her bottomless duffle bag. Jane was about to tell her to forget the taser, when Darcy pulled out a battered looking stick of her own and charged into the... it should have been the inside of a building, but it was a wide street, filled with people and lights and sound.

It should all have been completely impossible, and yet Jane was seeing it with her own eyes. Which meant that she was either hallucinating, or... Or something very interesting was happening. She pushed herself up off the ground and broke into a run, following Darcy.


	22. Exposition

“What the hell is going on?” Kate yelled as she dodged fleeing warlocks and tried to keep up with Natasha.

“Less questions, more zapping,” Natasha called back. New York had a thick and furious network of streets that slipped between the Muggle world, though the violent rampage of the beasts that had crashed the party was certainly breaking down a few barriers. Park-and-a-Half Avenue had gaping holes along one wall, and Hill’s voice could be heard over the din, ordering obliviators into position.

“But what the hell are those things?” Kate asked. Natasha had led them to within a block of the beasts, who were some form of dragon but not one that Kate recognised. Care of Magical Creatures had never been her best subject.

“Ironbellies,” a third voice said as Coulson dropped down beside them, taking shelter behind an overturned cart. “Ukrainian dragons.”

“Dragons breathe fire, not ice,” Natasha snapped.

Coulson frowned at the beasts. “Someone has obviously been getting up to mischief with their lineage.”

“You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?” Katie returned playfully. He gave her an unimpressed look, but she didn’t wipe the smile off her face. Everyone who went through Warburton knew that he made a hobby of experimenting. “You got a game plan?” she asked. “You going to bust out your old SHIELD moves? You going to curse these things back to the Stone Age?”

“Actually,” Coulson replied, his attention fixed on the fight ahead of them. “I’m hoping to have a word with our guest.”

Kate turned back to the dragons and saw a red figure dashing back and forth around the animals’ feet, wielding what looked like a battle hammer with an exceptionally long handle. He was calling out to the dragons, trying to keep their attention. Coulson pointed just beyond the beasts, to two figures who were crouched against a shop front.

“Nat,” Kate called. “Civilians!” Natasha vaulted over the cart they were hidden behind and leapt into the fray. Coulson stood up and fired sparks into the air, letting the cowering women see their position. Between the guy with the hammer and Natasha’s particularly potent stunning spells, the dragons were lured to one place just long enough for the two women to make a break for it. Kate was surprised to realise that one of them was Darcy Lewis, who had been two years above her at school.

“Miss Lewis,” Coulson said dryly as Kate helped pulled Darcy’s companion behind the cart, “You’re earlier than expected.”

“The freaking wall came down right in front of us!” Darcy replied. “What was I supposed to do?”

“It’s not like we have protocols for this,” Coulson returned, his tone just barely slipping into the realm of sarcasm. He pointed his wand at Darcy’s companion’s face, and Darcy knocked his hand away.

“I really don’t think having a mindless astrophysicist wandering around right now is the best idea,” she said sharply.

“Good, because you’re taking her to an emergency portkey once I’m done,” Coulson returned in a no-nonsense voice. 

“So, I’m Kate,” Kate said to the clearly shaken woman who was still clutching a paper cup of coffee.

“Jane,” she replied. “What’s going on?”

If Coulson was going to wipe her mind – and the rumour at Warburton had been that Coulson modified everyone’s mind at least once, just to keep in practice – then there would be no harm in filling her in and calming her down while he and Darcy had their little spat. “We’re witches, he’s a wizard, those things we think are dragons, and you’re kind of not meant to know any of this.”

“Oh,” Jane said. “And this stuff has been going on..?”

“Pretty much since the beginning of time.”

“I see.” Jane gave Darcy an unimpressed look, and Darcy shrugged in response.

“Let’s just say I went to a school for the gifted.”

Then Natasha was back behind the cart, yelling “Incoming!” as she skidded on the dust and rubble. Everyone tucked their heads down, and there was the loud thud of something meaty hitting the other side of the cart. There was a moment of silence, and then a long, low groan.

Coulson and Natasha darted around the cart, and dragged a limp body back to their little cluster of people. Coulson stuck his wand in the man’s face, and Natasha followed his lead. In his calm and pre-emptively disappointed classroom voice Coulson said, “I’d really appreciate some kind of explanation.”

There was another long groan, and the man pushed himself into a sitting position. “I am Thor of Asgard,” he said, bringing a hand up to his head. “I regret this attack that is being wrought upon you.”

“Culprit?” Natasha asked sharply.

“It is my brother, Loki.”

There was a pause as all of the warlocks present considered that. “He’s really not coping with loss well,” Kate finally said.

“He lost something?” Darcy asked.

Coulson looked at her incredulously. “Have you missed everything that’s been going on?”

“I’ve been in the field!”

“How do we stop him?” Natasha asked.

Thor pushed himself further forward, until his elbows were resting on his knees. He had a gash at one temple, and Darcy drew a bandage on it with the tip of her wand. “His power is illusion. If you can cast a spell through the centre of his beasts, usually they disperse.”

“Usually?” Kate asked, because someone had to.

“He is a very good illusionist,” Thor replied. 

“What does he want?” Coulson asked. 

Thor paused, and Kate was sure that he wasn’t going to tell them. Then there was the sound of a building losing some structural integrity behind them and he cringed. “He has decided that if monsters are to walk among men, they should do it in their true forms. The therianthropes, the changelings – he wishes to free them of the shackles of humanity.”

Natasha looked very, very concerned with this proposition. Darcy was shaking her head. “But that’s just not possible. Forcing people to change, that requires a lot of skill and power. There’s no way any one person could actually fuzz up a whole city.”

“Loki is crafting a new staff,” Thor said dully. “He is going to equip it with the Stone of the All-Father.”

“And that will be bad?” Natasha asked.

“He will have enough power to ‘fuzz up’ every changeling on this continent,” Thor said sombrely.

They all took a moment to digest that revelation. Coulson spoke up first. “And you said that he’s getting the staff made now? Then he’ll be at Stark’s. _Shit_.”

Thor pushed himself up onto his feet. “You’re sure of this? Take me there!”

“Think you can handle this?” Coulson asked Natasha. Nat poked her head over the top of the cart and looked at the dragons tearing up the city.

“Sure,” she said, her voice a little tight. “Not a problem. Before you go – do you think those birds are illusions, too?”

A hawk darted across the sky above them, chased by a cloud of mean, black birds. “Ah,” Thor said, looking up. “No. Those are real.” Coulson took off running towards Stark Tower and Thor followed close on his heels, keeping behind Coulson only because he didn’t know the way.

Kate turned to Jane and smiled at her as Darcy pressed a small box into Jane’s hand. “You’re taking this pretty well,” she observed.

“It actually explains a lot,” Jane replied. 

“Enjoy the knowledge while you can,” Natasha advised. “Alright, ladies – charge!”


	23. Flutter

One of the big cons of being a bird, Clint had often been forced to reflect, was that he couldn’t curse people properly. Hawks just didn’t have the vocal chords needed to get a good blast going. And talons honestly weren’t the best for gripping a wand. There were all sorts of tendons tied up with grip and leg position. It went against a lot of natural systems to actually point a wand and try to get some aim when he had his feathers on. 

Also, every now and then some parrot would want him to fertilise her eggs. That was always a little awkward.

Clint ducked and wove through the air, flying at top speed. On the bright side, he had attracted the attention of all of the ravens that had been flying about and terrorising civilians. On the down side, that meant that he had about fifty ravens on his tail and they were all cawing for his blood. There were too many for him to engage in air, and he knew that if he shifted back they’d be on him before he even had his wand in hand. He banked sharply, so sharply that some of his feathers grazed against the curved wall of Stark Tower. He needed a plan. He didn’t have a plan.

“Barton!” a voice yelled from below. “Drop, _now!_ ”

Clint folded his wings and dived towards the pavement. The ravens were still on his tail, but they had to circle awkwardly in their descent. All except one, who took a death dive right at him and grabbed onto him with sharp, gnarled feet. It rammed its beak into the soft feathers near Clint’s breast, and Clint screeched in agony. Then there was a high, sharp chorus of whistles and Clint was suddenly in the middle of a cloud of angry, golden flakes. The raven was torn from his side, and Clint struggled to right himself in the strange storm of movement and sound. He dropped below it, mere feet from the pavement, and a voice called his name again. Clint twisted towards it and tumbled through one of the handsome glass door of Stark Tower and skidded across the marble floor.

He felt himself shifting back to his human form, and didn’t even have the energy to be annoyed at Phil for casting the spell. He was worn out and breathless. He was bleeding heavily. He was lying on the floor with Phil Coulson pushing his shirt up. He was doing okay.

“Is taking on a flock of blind ravens something you do often?” Phil snapped at him.

“That’s classified,” Clint replied, panting heavily. “What’d you do to get them off my tail?”

“Classified,” Phil replied, busying himself with checking the wound at Clint’s side.

A small bronze bird with ruby eyes landed on Phil’s shoulder and chirped at him, as if reporting on the fight. “Huh,” Clint said, looking it over. “Nice pet you have there. Not a sparrow.” Clint cocked his head at the bird, and it cocked its head at him in response. It took off from Phil’s shoulder, and it was the movement of its wings that gave it away. “Snidget,” Clint said, quietly impressed. “You crossed a sparrow with a snidget.”

“The school defence budget was getting a little thin,” Phil replied. He pulled a sprig of melissa out of an inner pocket of his robe and put it in his mouth, chewing it quickly. He cut Clint’s shirt away from his side, and then pressed the mush of plant and spit against the wound. Of all the ways Clint had considered having Phil’s spit on him, this had not been on the list. But the haphazard poultice was already easing the burn out of the wound. Those raven’s had filthy mouths, in both senses of the word. 

Phil hauled Clint into a sitting position, and stripped his ruined shirt off. “Oh, hey,” Clint said, trying to get the tangle of cotton off his arms. “Sure, we can skip to this bit.” Then Phil aimed his wand at the hole in Clint’s side and some thick bandages flew out of the end and wrapped around Clint’s middle. “Ah, right.”

Phil was looking at him curiously, and it was harder to sit still under his gaze as a human. “You’re not what I expected,” Phil said at last.

“Is it the nose?” Clint asked. People had very firm ideas as to what a hawk-man’s nose should look like, and the reality of Clint’s face never meshed very well.

“The muscle,” Phil replied. Clint looked down at his own torso. It look a lot of strength to fly, and the jobs he and Natasha took meant that he couldn’t exactly be a weakling as a human either. “And the nudity,” Phil continued. 

Clint allowed his gaze to drift lower down his own body. The ravens had yanked a heap of his feathers out during the chase, and the conversion of mass between one form and another was always a little bizarre. Clint was sitting in the foyer of Stark Tower in his underpants, his watch, and some fresh bandages, with Phil Coulson of all people leaning over him. “Ah,” he said. “Yeah, this happens sometimes.”

Phil backed off and held his hand out to Clint, hauling him to his feet. It took Phil about twenty seconds to fill Clint in on the situation. “So that’s the big scheme?” Clint asked. “Turning changelings into animals? Oooh, scary.”

“You want to be stuck as a bird for the rest of your life?” Phil asked, striding towards the large staircase that led up out of the foyer.

“Kinda,” Clint admitted. Phil stopped and looked at Clint in surprise. “Look, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but warlocks are assholes. The only reason I haven’t given up and built a nest yet is because all birds are also assholes.”

“Some birds are alright,” Phil replied, which made Clint’s steps falter because that really wasn’t the response he’d been expecting.

“I guess some warlocks are okay, too,” he said awkwardly. Coulson was jogging up the wide, ornate steps, and Clint trailed after him. “I’m not,” he started. “Me and Natasha, we’re not a thing. There’s no one that I have a thing with. Katie may have been leading you on there.”

Phil gave him an annoyed look. “As thrilling as your lack of a love life is, there is an evil sorcerer to stop.”

“Right,” Clint replied. “Of course.” And then, because the day hadn’t been exhausting enough, there was the static crackle in the air of a large spell spreading out. Clint felt his skin crawling, and when he looked down his toes were having an identity crisis and were trying to shift into grey and scaly digits without his express permission.

Phil took one look at Clint, and then broke out into a run, calling “Bruce!” as loudly as he could. 

Because, yes, of course. When people were getting pressed into their alternate forms against their will, _of course_ Phil would go chasing after the werewolf. Clint tried to shift fully but his body wasn’t obeying – it was attempting to be two significantly different sizes at once. So, half-man and half-bird, he scuttled after Phil with his talons clicking on the cool, expensive floor.


	24. Old Dogs, New Tricks

The battle against Loki’s ice dragons was not going well. Natasha could hold her own in a duel, but her expertise lay in blasting curses and then making a getaway in the confusion that followed. Launching a frontal assault on a rampage of illusory dragons with two skittish witches and a Muggle throwing rocks as her only backup was not her ideal way to run an operation. And where the hell was Clint?

And then a wave of magic rolled through the air, and Natasha felt her skin prickle and shift. That just made everything so much better. She was honestly considering casting some fiendfyre and running for it when she caught the sound of someone approaching at a run. It was Captain Rogers, fast and furious, and looking a little pointy around the ears and mouth. He had his wand in hand, and bellowed a blasting curse at one of the dragons, knocking it back several yards.

“Civilians have been cleared out,” Natasha reported. “We’re trying to keep them from breaking through into more Muggle areas.”

“Do you know how to bring them down?” Captain Rogers asked.

“Negative,” Natasha returned. “They’re conjured. Intel says that if we can get a curse through them, they’ll fade away. But we haven’t had any success breaking through their hides.”

Rogers surveyed the scene. Kate was trying to press a dragon away from Jane with a revulsion jinx, but the purple light of the spell seemed to be doing the exact opposite. Darcy was standing next to her, using levitation charms to send pieces of rubble hurling at the eyes of the dragon that Kate was failing to repel. Jane was assisting by hurling rubble the old fashioned way, and her aim was significantly better than Darcy’s.

Captain Rogers suddenly doubled over. Natasha could see bones shifting in his shoulders through the tight fabric of his robe. His hands were broadening and his fingers were shortening into rough, hairy paws. Her own hair was flattening against her scalp, sinking into flesh that was growing slimy and moist. “Oh, and some crankypants has enchanted all changelings in the area,” she added lightly.

“Thanks for the warning,” Rogers replied. “We need to get the others somewhere safe.”

“There is nowhere safe,” Natasha returned sharply. 

“I’m not safe,” Rogers bit out around the cracking of bones as his jaw and palate shifted into a snout. He was hunched over, half-transformed and still huge. Heat poured off him and made Natasha’s chilled, wet skin shift happily in some basic animal response. And to think that all of the rumours said that he was cold to the touch.

“You’re going to have to be,” Natasha replied. She holstered the wand, waiting for the last moments of the change and hoping they would come quickly. “We’re not an army; you’re the closest thing we have to one.”

Rogers cast a glance around with round, yellow eyes. SHIELD warlocks were entering the area cautiously, but they had no better game plan than Natasha’s band of merry witches did. He shook his head. “If I had the Commandoes with me,” he started.

“Any chance they keep a pack of wolves in city?” Natasha asked sharply.

Rogers laughed, low and bitter, and Natasha was actually surprised by how different he sounded to his radio interviews. “No,” he replied. “Not even close.”

“Well then,” she said, her voice quavering because change was always hard, and changing against her will was the hardest of all. “Which reputation are you going to live up to?”

There were orders being shouted back and forth, but they conflicted and only added to the confusion. There was a crack of light, and someone screamed. Rogers hauled himself up onto a half-toppled stage, threw his head back, and howled. It was a long, hard, angry sound. Primal and terrifying. All humans in the area stopped and stared at him, wands in hand but the words scared away from their mouths. 

“I need _deprimo_ on the dragons at twelve and two,” he barked. “Get a line of _impedimentia_ to slow their charge. These are enchantments and we need to bust them open,” he yelled. “I need the curse teams in threes – two for a _sectumsempra_ attack and a third to launch a _confringo_ into the wound.” The surrounded warlocks stared at him, many of them shocked by the slow, sick ripple of his transformation. “ _Now!_ ” he snapped, and people finally sprung into action.

Rogers dropped down to all fours, his robes ripping down the seam along his spine. He wasn’t fully transformed, but the shift seemed to have stopped. He was a strange, horrible mix of man and beast. Natasha knew that she looked much worse.

While Clint adored his animagus form completely, Natasha’s wasn’t such a good fit. No, that was a lie. It was a perfect fit. It represented her completely. The anger and fear and violence of her past, the trajectory of her future. The kelpie’s preferred mode of hunting is to lure the unsuspecting into trusting it, underestimating it, and then dragging its prey into the dank depths of its habitat to devour them. And Natasha did just the same. _What a pretty little thing you are, why don’t you come and sit by me?_ Every job, every mission. She went in as honey and came out bloody. She aimed for deep breaths and settled on gasps, steamy air huffing out of her nose as she tried to calm down. She needed to be able to trust her body. She needed...

“Can you control yourself?” she asked, her voice thick and strange behind teeth that should not fit into a human head.

Rogers panted for a moment, and then shook his head as if to clear it. “Yeah,” he said at last. 

Natasha nodded, feeling somehow more stable with Rogers at her side. Two deadly beasts who should never be allowed near people, nevertheless preparing to do battle because there was still enough inside of them that was human. “Come on then,” she said, crouching down, ready to leap into action. “Let’s go hunting.”


	25. Long Live the King

Obadiah was already in the workshop when Tony strolled through the door. While Obie knew the mechanics of wand making, he’d stepped neatly to one side to take care of the business after Howard’s death. Tony designed the wands, though it was something that was rarely discussed. In the public eye, he was the playboy squib who was allowed to make the big announcements. He’d even been referred to as the Stark Industries mascot. Tony grinned his way through it all, because it was not as though making a fuss would change things. The walk to the tower had cleared his head some, but Tony’s heart felt heavy. There was unfinished business between him and his father, and it would always remain so.

“I’m not good company tonight, Obie,” Tony said with a sigh. The familiar space of his workshop was usually a comfort, but something about it felt off. “I’m never good company around this time of year.”

“Thinking of the old man?” Obadiah asked, and Tony nodded. “You should appreciate the gift he gave you instead of focussing on the years of emotional neglect,” Obie said in the playful voice he always used when talking about Howard. “You’re the one who got to bear his last name. Not his whole name, of course. A long run of Howard Starks and then you, Dittany, broke the chain.” Obie smiled with closed lips, sharp and pointed. “But you got the part that _matters_.”

Tony paused and took the time to study Obadiah. He was leaning against a bench, a long strip of wood in his hands. Tony couldn’t pick the variety by sight in the dim room, but he could smell a unique quality to the wood shavings. One of his mother’s specimens. “Is that—?”

“The black walnut and dogwood cross,” Obie replied. “I know you were saving it for a special occasion, but I had a request for a very specific core and my instincts went to this.” Tony’s brow furrowed. He was in charge of the core library and he knew there was nothing in them that would need a wood so mindful. Then Obie stepped to one side, revealing the source of the dark, dim light that played around the edges of the room, catching on corners and gliding across sharp surfaces.

“You like?” Obadiah asked, gesturing to the canister of light. “We had your pet scientist draw some up this evening while you were out at the party. You were right, Tony, having an expert on the old magics has been more of a benefit than I could have guessed. And now that you’re here, I have all of the ingredients I need for a blessing.”

Tony stared at Obadiah in confusion. Blessings were rarely performed in modern America – they upset the balance. Too strong a blessing without a suitable repayment could leave warlocks drained for years and years as the charm leeched their power in order to support the subject. Blessings involved dense magic, the kind that was hard to conceal from Muggles. And it required a very valuable sacrifice.

“I’ve got a man in my corner who is going to change the world,” Obie said conversationally. His eyes, usually a dark grey, shone bright blue in the light of the canister. “And he needs a staff, and a staff needs a core. And I was thinking to myself, what do we have just lying around at the tower that I could use? What do we have that no one could possibly miss?” Obadiah grinned, sharp and teasing. “And then you walked through the door.” He shrugged happily. “Who am I to ignore the fates, Tony?”

Obadiah had always looked out for Tony; he was one of two people still living who Tony trusted to always have his best interests at heart. But he had a staff held in two hands like a spear, and a smile on his face that didn’t sit quite right. For the first time, Tony felt afraid in his presence. “Obie,” Tony said firmly as he backed away, trying to shake Obadiah out of his strange mood. “We’re family.”

Obadiah lashed out with the staff and knocked Tony’s feet out from under him, sending him stumbling back against his workbench. “We’re brothers,” Obie snarled. “I put so much time and energy into you, shaping you.”

“I know you’ve made a lot of sacrifices—”

“Exactly.” Obadiah seemed to calm somewhat, and Tony relaxed. “ _Exactly_ ,” he repeated. “And the thing about sacrifices is that they always lead to gain.” Obadiah stepped forwards and smiled down at Tony, the same warm and amused smile that Tony had grown up with, the smile that had always marked Obie smoothing an argument or distracting Tony from the tension in the family. “The thing is, Tony,” he said in that gentle, chiding voice. “You’re useless, and yet you still keep hanging on. You’re like a parasite.”

The words cut deep, and Tony faltered.

“All of your achievements have come from someone else’s hard work. This company would have fallen apart if I hadn’t steered it true after Dad’s death. And when you took me to court, I still had them all convinced that you were just a stubborn, jealous brat,” he continued in a calm, sweet voice. “It was that lawyer you hired who turned everything around.”

“Pepper hired the lawyer,” Tony replied, his voice hollow.

Obie chuckled, shaking his head. “Letting that fucking girl into your life was the biggest mistake I ever made.” He paused for a moment, considering. “Maybe the second,” he conceded. “I should have killed you when you were young, the runt of the Stark litter. You nearly did die,” he added conversationally. “I cursed you the day before you were born. I knew that it was a risk, of course, but I didn’t want to be a murderer. I just needed some complications. A birth without magic can go wrong in so many ways. Everything got torn up when you came out, so at least I didn’t have to worry about a second little brother.”

Tony swallowed against the lump in his throat. His mother had named him Dittany after a plant with unparalleled healing properties. They’d both been sick after his birth, and Tony had always wondered if it were his fault, if maybe the warped quality inside him that killed magic was to blame. 

“Dad never wanted you,” Obadiah said bluntly. “His plan was to live forever. But your bitch of a mother was the smart one, wrangling him into bestowing the family name on you. Not smart enough to figure out what was wrong with you though. My best bit of magic, making you a squib, and I haven’t even been able to brag about it before now.”

“You—,” Tony said dully, and then struggled to find any words to follow. Every defining moment of Tony’s life was decorated with Obadiah’s silhouette. The big brother who had become a father figure, but just like their father Obie had been too busy with grander ideas to love Tony. His kindness had been that at least he’d pretended.

Obadiah watched the play of emotions across Tony’s face with an abashed smile. “Oops?” he offered, before breaking into a grin. “If it helps, you won’t have to suffer this pathetic existence much longer.” He raised the staff in his hands once more, and took another step towards Tony. 

Tony tried to retreat but a long bench was at his back. He couldn’t fight Obadiah. He’d been warned his whole life of the futility of going up against a warlock without magic on his side. Obie would blast him to smithereens. Maybe he would anyway, but Tony had been taught to take defeat with dignity. Obadiah had always given him good advice and Tony was foolish enough to follow it to the end. But then, the world was full of good advice.

He looked at Obie with worn and weary defeat on his face. “One last drink?” he asked. He raised one hand slowly, reaching for the crystal tumbler on the bench beside him, telegraphing his intentions. Obie raised the staff, and a stream of straw-coloured whiskey eased out the end. The smell of peat and a hint of salt, burnt mint and the mix of English oak and cypress that warlocks used for the barrels. Obie always had the good stuff. Tony raised his glass to Obadiah and offered his brother a wry smile, as if to acknowledge that there had been so many factors leading them to this one moment. Howard Stark and his ego, the biblical nature of two brothers and a birthright. Tony’s mind and movements were sluggish from the shock of the betrayal, but it did make a kind of sense. Tony took a small, slow sip, savouring the flavours as they rolled across his tongue. 

And then, remembering the words of Howard’s first wife, he threw the drink in Obie’s face and made a run for it.


	26. Expelliarmus

Thor found Loki at the top of the tower. His brother had always liked high places, the nooks and crannies above the line of sight where he could hide and watch. He had a new staff, crackling with power and the sheer strength of it made Thor afraid. Loki’s gift had always been in manoeuvring around problems, and despite the black of Loki’s new attire and the blue of the skin on his bare arms, it was the staff more than anything that marked the change that had overcame him.

The Stone of the All-Father had been hewn, had been cut small and bright and shiny. Thor didn’t know if it could ever be used to fortify Asgard again. More importantly, he recognised it as a sign that Loki had no intention of returning.

“Loki,” Thor called across the space between them. “Why have you chosen to wreak destruction on this day?”

Loki turned to Thor, smiling as though he were deeply amused. “They were celebrating death,” he said simply. “I felt it only fitting that I should give them more to rejoice in.”

“Loki, please,” Thor said plaintively. “You are not a killer. You are not the monster you seem to think is befitting of your form. You must end this.”

Loki turned away from Thor and stared down at the wreckage of warlock New York below them. “Your friends are distracting my pets,” he said with a disappointed shake of his head. “It was very unsporting of you to give the game away – I was hoping to watch you get trampled into the night. But no matter, I shall find a new way for you to entertain me.” He grinned and pointed his staff down at the mêlée below. There was a crack, and a third person joined their party with a scream. Jane hung in Loki’s grip, pinned to his chest with his arm around her throat. She looked very small against Loki’s tall frame, and very scared.

“Come then, mighty prince of Asgard,” Loki said, grinning with his neat, white teeth. “Come and rescue your fine maiden. Ah, I see the anger on your face. Is she to be your queen? I suppose that after my presence within its walls the bloodline of Asgard can’t be sullied any further. Strike me down, if you dare.”

Thor knew the tactic, had used it against Loki himself when they had been small and had fought over toys. Loki wanted to goad Thor into action, prompt him into acting rashly so that Jane would be injured and Loki could take advantage of the confusion. Jane looked at Thor with wide eyes, desperately hoping to be saved. She was a defenceless Muggle, armed only with the tiny casket of lightening clutched in one hand.

“I am not so mighty,” Thor called in response. “Nor am I foolish. I know your armour will protect you from any lightening I call down, and you know that my aim is not so good as to hit your flesh.” Thor glanced down at Jane and saw her expression shift. Loki opened his mouth to goad Thor even further, and Jane wrenched her arm up, pressing the casket of lightening right into Loki’s face.

Loki howled in agony and twisted away from Jane with a crack, aparating feet away and turning to her with a snarl. But the brief retreat was all that was needed – the redheaded sorceress who had aided Thor in battle earlier cracked into place beside Jane, grabbed her, and was gone again in an instant. 

Loki rounded on Thor, his red eyes narrowed as his face twisted with rage. There was a hot blister forming at his cheek. He had always reacted poorly to lightning. “No matter, I shall find others. I will hunt down all of the people you love.”

Thor could only stare at Loki imploringly and hope that the ache he felt inside was as apparent on his face as Loki’s turmoil was on his own. “Why do you think you need others to wound me when I am already suffering your pain?”

Loki snorted, and pulled himself into a more refined posture, looking down his nose at Thor as he had in years past. “Sympathy to monsters is hardly a fitting quality for a king,” he said, and his tone was so similar to the one he used in jest that Thor could not help but hope that this antagonism would pass, that Loki would lower his staff and return home to continue being one of the few people Thor could depend upon to acknowledge his foolishness.

“I was never meant to rule on my own,” Thor said honestly, taking steps towards Loki. “And I would not rule at all without you by my side.” Whatever their father’s intentions had been, Thor and Loki had been raised as brothers. Thor knew that he was Odin’s son and Frigga’s pride and Loki’s brother. And with his father and his brother taken from them, his mother had too much pain to feel pride in any of it. Thor was incomplete without his family, and as selfish as his love for Loki was it was at least something he could still fight for.

Loki faltered at the honesty in Thor’s voice. “I was never meant to be by your side,” he replied. There was no posturing or grandeur in his voice. Loki without his ceremony was a different creature, and Thor longed to sit by Loki’s side and nudge him with his shoulder as he had always done when Loki had fallen into such low, honest moods. “Asgard would never tolerate a beast like me sullying the court. I would have been run down to death if they’d known what I am.”

Thor reached out and placed and hand on Loki’s arm. He was cold to touch, painfully cold, but Thor wrapped his fingers around the lean forearm and held on, praying that his warmth would sink into Loki’s flesh and spark some warmth in his countenance. “And yet some must have known for you to have been brought in at all,” he countered. “Brother, why have you gone to such pains to transform yourself when together we could instead change Asgard?”

Loki snorted. “You say such foolish things,” he snapped. “As though it would be so easy to turn your back on the bloody history of your people, of the cruelty of mine.”

“We are each other’s people,” Thor said simply. “Loki,” he said plaintively. “Brother, please. Come home.”

Loki’s expression twitched and shifted. Even with the scars over his skin and the red of his eyes, Thor knew his brother’s face and Loki was in pain. He was scared and hurt. He was vulnerable and struggling to hide it, and Thor was not entirely surprised when Loki twisted out of Thor’s grip and disappeared with a flash of green light.


	27. Undone

Tony stared at the ceiling of his workshop. It was a high ceiling. During the day long windows filled the space with natural light. During the night it was usually lit by electricity. It kept the warlocks out; they didn’t trust a light that didn’t crackle and pop. The large room was dark though, completely dim except for the canister of raw magic and the soft glow of chalk lines on the floor. Circles and sacrifice, the oldest magic there was.

Tony was dying. It was slow and it was painful and it was horrible. Magic couldn’t save him, healing spells had always slid right off. Muggle medicine would be no help, he’d die as soon as he crawled out of the circle. Obadiah had sliced Tony’s chest open, had peeled back his ribs and pressed the head of the staff right into Tony’s heart. It had hurt so much that Tony hadn’t even been able to scream.

Bruce had turned up before Obie could finish him off, more monster than man. A snarling, snapping mass of fur and muscle. He’d chased after Obie, bounding across the floor and Tony had only been able to appreciate the sight from a distance. But he was glad to have seen it. A real werewolf. Bruce could do with letting some of that energy seep out into his human life. Tony would have liked to...

Colour flickered at the edge of his vision, the purple-green of magic. He wondered if the lights over the North looked the same. He wondered if warlocks could see the shape of magic like this all the time. No wonder people looked down on him – he’d spent his whole life without eyes and without hands when it came to magic.

He heard a skittering nearby and, with great effort, he managed to roll his head to one side. Sweat dripped across his forehead. His father had died in half this time – Howard Stark, always determined to get things done. A pair of large yellow eyes stared back at Tony, and blinked.

“Hey, Dummy,” Tony rasped. Rhodey had given Tony an owl as a birthday present back in school. There were pigeons out there more reliable than Dummy, and Tony had never before seen a bird make as much mess as Dummy did when he was simply sitting still. But he seemed to like Tony, and that was probably more proof that he was an idiot than any of his other habits.

Dummy cocked his head at Tony, hooted once, and then took off from the bench, sending papers and wood shavings everywhere. Tony coughed at the dust that had been kicked up and closed his eyes. It was probably best that Dummy be somewhere else, even if it did mean that Tony was alone. The dumb bird was messed up enough as it was.

It was strange, the length and duration of the end. He couldn’t move his fingers or toes. His limbs were cold. He could feel his heart trying to beat but there just wasn’t enough of it left whole. Blood was pooling, flooding, sinking. He could feel the air of the room on his lungs, cold and disconcerting. Fucking magic. It had only ever made his life harder. It was going to make his death as hard as possible. Tony was just so tired of being a fuckup. He was tired of the slow creep of death. He couldn’t even mange to be murdered right.

Behind the stutter of his heart and the rasp of his own breath, he heard a tapping sound. Slightly uneven and getting louder. Pepper was beside him, the sound of his name falling past her lips unfocussed. Sound was a form of energy and it was all getting tangled up. Circles and sacrifice, and Tony’s death just held so much potential.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I promise. I’m nearly...”

“No, Tony,” Pepper replied. “Tony, we can. I can. Please.”

He felt her fingers at his shoulder, on his stomach. There was too much mess for her to ever hope to close up but she was trying. She was kneeling beside him and there would be blood and chalk on her slinky blue dress. It had been a good dress. “ _Lumos_ ,” she whispered, but the light at the end of her wand turned into butterflies, and the butterflies turned into small and delicate fireworks. Too much raw magic in the circle. Pepper snatched up the canister of sourced magic and used the purple-green glow to light Tony up.

“Tony,” she said. Her voice was a wet and breaking sound, and Tony thought that it was so unfair that she was being hurt by this. “There’s something inside.” Her hair tucked behind her ears, leaning over him. The light of magic made her hair seem dark brown, her skin a soft violet. Freckles stood out as flecks of green. She looked like some kind of magical creature. She was, really. All warlocks were in the eyes of a squib.

“Old,” he said. “Curse. Obie.” Pepper was shaking her head, had her wand in her hand. “Squib,” Tony said, though it came out as a sigh, and Pepper’s eyes widened.

“I can- Tony, I can try-”

“No,” he said. “It’s okay.” And it was, strangely.

As much as he wanted Pepper to be far away, to be somewhere safe and not crying because of him, if he could pick one thing that he’d like to see, to hear, to smell... He forced his eyes open, saw Pepper with her wand in hand, biting her lower lip. She prodded the tip of it into Tony’s chest, and he hissed, pain blossoming into agony as the curse that had grown into his very bones made its displeasure known. Pepper’s expression went stony, and she shoved her short, dainty wand as far into the cavity of Tony’s chest as she could, twisting and reeling and to Tony it felt like she was pulling everything that he was away from him, as though she were sucking the marrow from his very bones.

“Now,” she said, her voice shaking. “This... this might not work.”

“Pepper,” he rasped. If he could move his hand he would put it on her knee, tell her to give up because his vision had already gone black and he couldn’t feel his heart moving any more. He felt her hand on his forehead, wiping sweat away with her long cool fingers.

“It’ll be okay,” she said, but neither of them believed it. She yanked the curse out of him, threads of it snapping and lashing through Tony’s body, and it hurt like nothing living had ever hurt before. And that was it, Tony thought in the cold darkness that followed. That was the moment of his death.

And then something slammed into his chest, cracking him open all over again, and his vision was flooded with the colour of magic.


	28. Sleeping Dragons

Bruce wasn’t exactly a regular werewolf. Captain Rogers had been quite unique, and some of his distinguishing traits had been passed on to Bruce. Both kept their minds to a greater degree during the transformation, though there remained something raw to them. There was a reason no werewolves were allowed to take up habitat in densely populated areas. The Howling Commandoes were housed in the wilds up North, and weren’t allowed to roam without Captain Rogers to keep them in check. 

Phil had fought quite hard for Bruce’s habitation permit to be extended to include cities. If Bruce went and mauled someone in his current state, they’d both get sent up river. 

The sounds of thrashing and snarling were getting louder as Phil raced through the tower, Clint scuffling along behind him. They skidded around a corner and saw the hunched shape of Bruce up ahead. He was more wolf than Clint was bird, huge and terrible and strong. Phil recognised Obadiah Stane pressed up against the wall by Bruce’s snapping maw. Phil unholstered his wand and sent a stream of sparks at Bruce, burning his pointed ear. Bruce turned and snarled, barking at Phil to keep him back, and Obadiah took the opportunity to twist in on himself. Bruce swiped at him as he apparated, and the warlock cried out. 

There was a reason as to why werewolves weren’t allowed to apparate – the magical fields of their bodies disrupted the spell. There was blood on the wall and what looked like some meat stretched across the plaster. Stane had splinched himself, and Phil could only hope that the man had landed somewhere close to a hospital.

Of course, with Bruce’s prey having fled, Stane’s fate was the least of Phil’s concern. Bruce turned and lashed out at him, and it was only Phil’s quick reflexes that had him skipping back out of reach just in time. “My,” Clint commented as Phil backed up several paces, his wand at the ready, “what big teeth you have.”

“Not helping,” Phil said sharply as Bruce growled low in his throat. “Bruce, get your head together.”

“I nearly had him,” Bruce said in his low, wrecked voice. His vocal chords were more beast than being, and he would probably be incomprehensible to anyone less familiar with wolfish sounds. “I nearly had him ripped open.”

“I know,” Phil said in a soothing voice, trying hard to soften his duelling posture. Wolves responded so strongly to body language. Bruce had told him that they couldn’t actually smell fear, but they could see it in twitching hands and the leap and pound within the carotid artery.

“Tore Stark open,” Bruce continued, his big head swaying back and forth. The middle of the change was the most disorienting, from what Phil had seen. Not human enough to be rational and not wolf enough to run on instincts. “Show him blood. Tear them all.”

“I know,” Phil repeated in the level, patient voice. “It’s okay, Bruce. You’ll get him next time.”

“Don’t _lie_ to me,” Bruce snarled, leaping forwards and sending Phil skipping back another six feet. “You lie to everyone.”

“Yes,” Phil replied simply. Lying was what the division did and education was certainly no place for honesty. Lying to Bruce as a man was something that Phil did on reflex, and the wolf had no great need for conversation.

“You’re still working for Fury,” Bruce snarled.

“Well, yes. The warlock education system is under the umbrella of responsibilities held by the-” Phil was cut off as Bruce lashed out at him again, sending him back another few steps. A handrail of carved wood pressed against his lower back, nowhere to go. That was one downside of retiring, in Phil’s opinion – the reflexes quickly went to hell. What a rookie mistake.

Bruce pressed into Phil’s space, his teeth bared and his breath hot and wet. “We’ll see how well you spy on me,” he said, his words full of hard and meaty vowels, “with that eye torn out.” If Bruce took a swipe at him with those beastly hands, Phil would lose more than his eye. He’d already lost an eye once, surely he should have a free pass from this kind of thing.

“He’s a charming guy,” Clint commented from behind Bruce’s shoulder. “I can see why you’re friends.”

“Little help?” Phil replied without taking his eyes off Bruce.

Clint rushed at Bruce, and the were spun around and crouched low, preparing to leap at the mess of feathers and talons. Clint hit Bruce with a stunning curse at the same time as Phil cast a binding jinx on him. Bruce struggled for a moment, and Phil was worried that the binding wouldn’t hold him. Then there was a loud crack and a ripple through the air. Clint and Bruce’s bodies started writhing, and Phil could only hope that was a sign that Loki had fled and taken his magic with him. Phil could defend himself against an average werewolf, but he had no hope of escaping Bruce should his old friend decide to hunt him down.

But no, Clint’s face was smoothing into something more hawk than human and Bruce’s feet were shortening and taking a more familiar shape. He was still snarling and writhing, and when he lunged forwards Clint dived at him and Phil shot off another curse. Bruce hung between them for a moment, battered and bloody and not entirely still because his body was still changing, and then he toppled backwards into Phil.

The air was knocked out of him as he hit the ground, Bruce a solid and immoveable and still rather furry on top of him. Pinned by a werewolf twice in as many minutes. He was losing his touch.


	29. Priorities

Clint skipped awkwardly across the stone floor of Stark Tower. Hawks weren’t exactly poised and elegant creatures on the ground. He hopped and shuffled over until he was standing by Phil’s elbow and then he changed, shifting and stretching until he was crouching on his toes with his hands resting on his knees. Bruce’s transformation took longer, maybe due to size or maybe because of the nature of the beast. Bruce shrunk, fur folding back into skin and his face flattening and smoothing out until he was just a man, soft and naked and sprawled out over Phil. Phil sighed deeply, and ran his fingers through Bruce’s scalp, scratching gently at the skin behind Bruce’s ear.

Clint looked down at Phil and raised an eyebrow. “Should I be giving you two some alone time?” he asked.

“Help me up,” Phil replied.

Clint rose up out of his crouch and pressed at Bruce’s shoulder with a foot, and between the two of them they rolled the doctor to one side. Phil shrugged out of his robe and draped it over Bruce’s naked body like a blanket.

“So they guy who tried to eat you gets clothes, and I get to stand here and freeze my feathers off?” Clint had honestly been more naked in public, but it wasn’t a habit he wanted to cultivate.

Phil gave Clint an unimpressed look and reached past him, snagging a white research robe off a hook on the wall and passing it over. “Are you always this annoying as a person?” Phil asked as Clint pulled the robe on.

“Pretty much,” Clint replied. “So,” he said, looking down at the stunned werewolf stretched between them. “Want to grab breakfast sometime?”

“Sure,” Phil replied, and Clint was stunned for a moment with how easy it had been. “You owe me about twenty donuts by now.”

“What? I do not.”

“You always steal my breakfast.”

“You leave it out on your desk.”

“It’s my desk, not a buffet.”

“You need a more balanced breakfast, anyway.”

“This from the bird living off my table scraps.”

“Be nice to me or you’re getting nothing but mice with your coffee.”

“Next time Nick sends me something, I’m going to make you carry a brick back,” Phil returned, though Clint could tell that he wasn’t nearly as grumpy as he pretended to be. Clint had good eyes, he knew a lot of Phil’s tells.

“So,” Clint said as Phil dusted himself down, “what’s the deal with the eye?”

“Something taken, something given,” Phil replied, almost absently. It was one of the first things warlocks were taught about duelling – a wound is carried until it is healed, and there is a balance that must be achieved. Returning a fellow warlock to the balance is an incredibly generous gift. From what Clint had observed of warlocks, nothing that generous was ever really a gift.

“And Fury... gave you an eye?”

“Yes.”

Clint paused, turning the information over and trying to look at it from several angles. “I didn’t expect you to admit to that,” he said at last.

Phil looked nonplussed, as if the whole thing were no big deal. “No one ever asks,” he said by way of explanation. Clint understood that feeling – he had a messy past of his own, and people would never ask for the story when they could stare and entertain themselves with trying to piece it together from gossip instead.

“And is it true that he can see out of it?” Clint asked, peering at Phil’s brown eye. Phil let him, let Clint lean right into his space even though they both knew that if Phil wanted Clint to back off then he could make it happen. The eye was a deep, deep brown, the colour of dark chocolate. So dark that the pupil was hard to find. Clint switched his attention to the blue eye. There were brown flecks dotted amongst at least four clearly identifiable shades of blue. It was intricate and pretty, and made such a brazen contrast. Clint leaned back and looked at Phil’s face as a whole. It fit, somehow, the mismatched eyes and the scars across one temple. 

“Fury has ways of seeing into any place that needs watching over,” Phil said when Clint had relaxed his attention enough to absorb Phil’s words. “He doesn’t need me for that.”

“So, why’d he do it? Were you buddies or something?”

“I imagine he expects me to come in useful one day,” Phil replied lightly, though it wasn’t a light topic of conversation at all. When one warlock saved another it created a bond between them. It was old and deep magic, and Clint was justifiably wary about getting tangled up in someone who was already tangled up in other things. Which, he understood, was exactly why Phil was being so effortlessly upfront. _Here is my baggage_ , he was saying, _take it or leave it_. Clint did a lot of entirely legal work with people who were within the acceptable limits of shadiness. He knew how to appreciate honesty.

“So,” Clint said, smiling even though the stretch of lips felt strange after the stable shape of a beak. “Where are we meeting for breakfast tomorrow?”


	30. Heart

San Estaban hospital was a large sandstone building with a view of the ocean from every window. That the building was located in central New York State was of little consequence. Everyone knew that the sea air sped along recovery. Tony had a private room and some very attentive healers. None of them knew exactly how to treat him, but they were all utterly fascinated by his condition. Tony had been conscious for about two hours and was already planning on getting out of the hospital as soon as possible, even if it meant walking back to Stark Tower in a hospital gown with his butt hanging out.

“You can stick it out until they officially decide they can’t do anything,” Pepper said firmly from beside his bed. She was still wearing the blue dress, though someone had given her a blanket to wrap around her shoulders. “At least pretend that you’re an adult for a while,” she said fondly.

“On the topic of being an adult,” Tony said before pausing to take a deep breath. He could feel his lungs press against the object in his chest as he inhaled, and grimaced. “I guess I won’t be going to that school thing,” he continued. “You probably don’t want a date that...” _Glows_. Tony Stark, world’s most famous squib, had a hole in his chest filled with a glass canister that was in turn filled with raw magic. He’d waved a hand at a healer earlier and sparks had flown from his fingers. He was terrified of his own sudden movements. If he was ever allowed out of the hospital there was good chance that he’d just get scooped right up by SHIELD. Pepper was smart. She probably knew it too. Soon she was going to pull her planner out of thin air and strike away every commitment that had his name next to it. “I know you hate it when people talk,” he finished awkwardly.

Pepper’s voice was a little hoarse when she replied, though Tony could hear that she was doing her best to keep her tone light. “They’ll all be too busy talking about why my boss is my date,” she replied, and Tony winced. Obadiah, rat-bastard that he was, had been right on that score. Tony was going to ruin her if he didn’t back off.

“About the whole me being your boss thing-”

“You’re a great boss,” Pepper said firmly.

“Because I know that you could be doing other things-”

“I like being your assistant.”

“You could be doing _great_ things-”

“Tony,” Pepper said sharply, “I’m not going anywhere.” Her face softened and she placed her hand on the back of his, folded her fingers across his palm. “Besides,” she said in a voice that would have been playful if her lower lip hadn’t trembled, “I thought I was going to be your boss for that one night.”

Tony squeezed her hand and it felt so wonderful when she squeezed back. “Well,” he said after staring at her face for a long moment and realising that he just wasn’t strong enough to deny her, “we would have to get a contract drawn up.”

“A probationary one,” Pepper agreed, nodding.

“Probationary?”

“You don’t have a lot of experience,” Pepper replied. “You’re going to need training up. I’m a busy woman, Tony, I expect a lot from my underlings.”

“Oh, so I’m an underling now?”

“You will be once we get your contract drawn up.” She gave Tony an aloof look that was only improved by the way she struggled to hide her smile. “Now you’re just a potential-probationary-underling.”

“So that’s how it is?” Tony asked, narrowing his eyes at the challenge. “I am going to blitz that probationary period, just so you know. I have a lot of skills.”

Pepper smirked at him. “You’re pretty good at opening my mail,” she conceded.

“See? Relevant skills everywhere.”

Pepper smiled at him them, real and warm and genuine as she leaned forwards and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. If she had been any other woman, Tony would have turned his head to the side and taken advantage of the lips against his skin. But it was Pepper. Pepper who had looked out for him since he had been seventeen and so very angry. Pepper who had saved his life in hundreds of small ways and then topped it off by saving it in the most dramatic way possible. She had severed the charms that had bound him for life and she had poured magic into him because breaking the many, many laws surrounding sourcery had been preferable to letting him die. Pepper had given Tony everything, and he had no idea how he was ever going to begin repaying her.

“You could do a lot better than me,” he blurted out. Pepper was smart, smart and so very savvy, but there was a chance she didn’t know that. It was only fair that he point that out to her, get the realisation of his unsuitability as a suitor out of the way while his heart was still quite literally broken.

Pepper smiled down at him, and then lifted his hand to her mouth and kissed his rough and scarred knuckles. “I know you, Tony,” she said simply in response. She was probably one of the few people who actually knew him, _really_ knew him, and she still thought that he was worth the risk. She had faith in him, and of all of the revelations Tony had recently lived through, that one was the most terrifying.


	31. Ms, Mrs, MOM, Ma’am

Margaret Carter stared down at the newspaper on her desk as the other members of the Wizarding Security Council bickered through their mirrors. The attack on New York the previous day had set the wizarding world alight with gossip. The Daily Prophet was running the story as another example of the culture of conflict in the Americas, as if Europe hadn’t recently been through similar turmoil. It was how she had been shoved into the position of Minister for Magic. Her predecessor, Shacklebolt, had quickly realised that organising a ministry was a very different task to organising an army and that his strengths lay firmly with the latter. 

“We can’t be letting such manipulation of therianthropes happen again,” Abebi Effiong, the African and Middle Eastern representative, said firmly. “There is enough conflict in my region without adding a changeling uprising to the mess.”

“You need to track down this Loki,” Hoang Deng of Indochina agreed, pointing a finger at Nick Fury. “He has broken enough international laws for the ICW to put him away for the rest of his life.”

“And are you going to go out there and catch him, Hoang?” Gillard of the Pacific region asked pointedly. “Are these numbers right, Fury? Death toll in the hundreds and memory charms performed on over a thousand Muggles?”

“They’re as accurate as loose approximations can be,” Fury said, stone-faced. Deng and Effiong shook their heads with distaste at the scale of the attack, while Gillard looked impressed. There were probably more victims of the New York incident than warlocks in Gillard’s whole region.

Peggy ignored the conversation – she would tune back in if they ever started discussing some kind of global approach to security – and leafed through the paper. There was an editorial in The Daily Prophet on the unnecessarily tight restrictions on werewolves in the Americas. Peggy snorted as she read it – if the wizards and witches of the Europe thought Fury’s policies were harsh, she’d hate to hear what they thought of the ministry’s. The changes of the late-nineties were yet to be revoked (there was always public unrest when it was mentioned), and there was a reason that the Howling Commandoes recruited so successfully from her region.

She turned to the front page and stared at the picture there with carefully guarded amazement. Steve had never let Peggy see him when he transformed, and she had respected that wish. Seventy years since the Greenland Campaign, and The Daily Prophet had the first images of Captain Rogers in all of his furry glory. He was magnificent. He was still as handsome as ever, had been handsome on the first day she had met him – all sharp cheekbones and smooth skin, and such lovely eyes. Small and scrawny and incredibly fierce. His wolf form was handsome, too, though incomplete in the photograph. She wondered if his fur smelled as sweet as his hair had, that clean mix of soap and scented smoke.

They had been engaged, once. They had been walking through Tarwain, a large wizarding centre in Canada, during the war. Peggy had seen a beautiful white dress and had stopped to admire it. “You should buy it,” Steve had said, standing by her shoulder and a good inch shorter than her even when they were both in boots.

“Why on earth would I need a flashy thing like that?” she had asked, trying to sound derisive and not quite managing it. 

“Because I’m going to marry you when this is all over,” Steve had replied, not looking away from the dress. His eyes flickered slightly, his focus shifting to Peggy’s reflection in the clean glass, and she had beamed at him. It had been the first proposal that Peggy had ever received, and she’d accepted with giddy pleasure.

Then Steve had changed. Everything had changed. He’d never forgiven her for saving his life. He’d rather have died than allowed some part of Schmidt to live on in him. He hadn’t been able to look her in the eye after their time in the ice, and it had gone without saying that the engagement was off.

And then Howard, sweet, arrogant, uncertain Howard had looked at her and shrugged one shoulder and given her a playful grin. “Well, there’s no point in wasting a good dress,” he’d said. And so she had been engaged again, though she never wore the ring Howard made her. It seemed too personal, which was one of the many signs that they wouldn’t last.

“You should hold the ceremony on the seventh,” Steve had told them, looking at Howard. “Full moon, ideal date. It’ll bless the union.”

“But Steve,” Peggy had protested. “You wouldn’t be able to come.”

Steve had looked down at Peggy’s shoes, a small and sad smile on his face that made him look so very young despite his new bulk. Because he’d had no intention of attending, no matter when they held the damn ceremony. So rather than the intimate celebration of friends and family, Peggy had let Howard invite whoever the hell he had wanted. Enough people to fill up the space Steve had left behind when he’d disappeared into the wilderness.

Peggy sighed at the newspaper and then folded it in half and dropped it in the bin beside her desk. She wasn’t a lovesick young girl any more. She was approaching one hundred, and if she wasn’t careful then people would start expecting her to act her age. Pah, what rot.

The WSC was making all the noises of wrapping up, and Peggy sat back, cold and aloof as Deng, Effiong, and Gillard signed off. “You got anything to add, Minister?” Fury asked her, tired annoyance in his voice. He hated these council meetings as much as she did, and she knew that he didn’t have the time to spare for one in the middle of the crisis.

“When he strikes again, let me know,” she said brusquely. 

“ _If_ Loki strikes again,” Fury said carefully, “I will certainly be following the established protocol.”

“To hell with the protocol,” Peggy snapped. “We got through our last conflict alone because the international channels were clogged. You’ve got some of our people in your region, and we may not seem to like them much when they’re running around on all fours, but I’m damn well not going to see them left to burn.”

“Leave no man behind,” Fury said, smiling as though he was laughing at her passion.

“You’re hardly any better,” she returned shortly, and he barked out a laugh. “How bad is it over there?” she asked. Fury had reported at the beginning of the council meeting, but Peggy and Nick had a friendship of sorts behind closed doors. 

“We’re stable,” Fury replied bluntly. “People are afraid of change, and that includes a change of government.”

“And your intel on Loki?”

“We’re not without resources,” Fury replied cryptically.

Peggy sighed. “I don’t suppose you want to tell me your plans?”

“I don’t suppose I would,” Fury returned.

Peggy shook her head disapprovingly at him. “Well, send up a flare when you need me. God knows if that little bastard sets foot in Europe, you’ll be able to hear me cussing from across the ocean.”

Fury gave her a fond and amused smile. “You’re still known as The Howler over here.” 

Peggy rolled her eyes. You yell at one foreign dignitary at an international conference... Though there was also the time she’d jinxed a reporter for asking if she coloured her hair at a press conference for the extension of the Warlock Veteran’s Hospital in Tarwain. And the Captain America connection had played its part, too. She glanced down at the discarded newspaper. “Give my regards to Captain Rogers when you call him in,” she said formally. Because Fury _would_ call him in. Because Peggy and Steve hadn’t spoken since she and Howard had married. 

Fury gave her a soft smile. “I always do,” he replied before signing off. 

Peggy stared at the blank mirror for one long, still minute, and then incinerated the paper in her wastebasket with a flick of her wand. She had a country to run, and while The Prophet liked to tell itself that Loki was problem of their neighbours, Peggy knew that dark times were ahead.


	32. Assemble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firstly, credit where credit is due. This story was initially inspired by the video [Inner-City Wizard School: The State of Public Magic in America](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDXshyDMyJY), and could not have been written without the wonderful resource [The Harry Potter Lexicon](http://www.hp-lexicon.org/index-2.html) \- go and check both of these things out.
> 
> Once again, thank you to [Mikey](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mikes_grrl/pseuds/Mikey) and [Frankie_Felony](http://archiveofourown.org/users/frankie_felony/pseuds/frankie_felony) who brainstormed this fic with me (they are to thank for squib!Tony), and also to [candesgirl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/candesgirl/pseuds/candesgirl) and followthebutterflies who assisted me in sorting out the HP canon for animagi. This fic would not have been written without the help I received from these wonderful people.
> 
> Finally, thank you to everyone who has commented, kudos'd, bookmarked, subscribed, and generally let me know that you've been enjoying this fic. And a massive thank you to those who pointed out typos - you are my favourites.

The meeting room was filled with bodies and Secretary Fury stood quietly in one corner, watching them all. Ms Romanov was seated across the table from Captain Rogers, reading the front page of The Boston Scry. “Bad news, Captain,” she said cheerfully. “It looks like Stark pushed our beauty snaps to the third page." It wasn’t the first time that Tony Stark’s nipples had dominated the front page, though it was certainly the most controversial incident to date.

Rogers had one hand covering his face, thumb and forefinger pressing at his temples. “What does the editorial say?” he asked.

“I don’t think there’s-”

“There’s always an editorial,” he replied flatly, and further down the room Dr Banner cringed without looking away from his own conversation. Banner and Rogers had not acknowledged one another at all, but Banner gave plenty of cues that at least some of his attention was latched on to Rogers, and Rogers would probably have similar tells if it weren’t for his long years of field training. Romanov turned to page nine and started skimming over the column of text.

“Well,” she said at last, “the good news is that they’re located a large farm where you can run free.” The distaste was heavy in her voice, and Rogers looked pained but completely unsurprised. You couldn’t get your fur out in the middle of New York without some people complaining and demanding that you to think of the children. Wr Coulson had been asked to comment on the matter, given that he was apparently a representative of the children’s best interests, and he’d said something appropriately professional about Captain Roger’s conduct in a time of danger and how fortunate the city had been that his skills as a tactician had been available. He had been holding a Howling Commandoes mug in the photograph, and while Fury knew that Phil simply hadn’t considered the item at the time, the photograph of Phil looked quite bashful and spent a lot of time trying to hide the mug outside the frame of the image.

Phil was sitting at the far end of the table, in a heated argument with Miss Lewis about something that Fury was definitely not going to get involved in while Ms Bishop watched. Warburtons turned out a number of warlocks well-suited to the Division, but Nick held the opinion that graduation date was irrelevant – if a past student was in the same local area as Phil, they were Phil’s problem. Barton was perched on the back of Phil’s chair, idly grooming the feathers under one wing.

Doctors Foster and Banner were seated along from Miss Lewis, with Thor Odinson sitting opposite them. It was hard to know which of the three looked stranger – Thor in his princely regalia, Banner with half of his face bruised and swollen from his takedown in Stark Tower, or Foster who was distracted every few minutes by everyday things like the green flames in the fireplace and the automatic notation quills darting back and forth across the parchment so Banner could rest from taking notes, to the way Sergeant Barnes kept poking his face through the walls of the meeting room and looking for hidden passages. The three of them were debating heavily about thaums and particles, and Fury was tempted to have Phil take them out back and wipe them all clean as a precaution. Loki had attacked New York because he had needed sourcerers. As much as it pained Nick to admit it, Captain Rogers had been correct in his assessment of Stark’s grand scheme to research the raw nature of magic – it had been far more trouble than it had been worth.

And as soon as the thought of Stark crossed Fury’s mind, the doors to the meeting room burst open and Tony himself walked in, flanked by Potts and Rhodes. Tell people that they’re required to attend a confidential and restricted meeting, and they take it as a sign to invite their friends along. Stark was dressed in an expensive suit with the top two buttons of his shirt undone, allowing the soft glow of his core to peek out over the white cotton. His mangled chest had dominated the news since photos had been leaked the previous day, so there was no point in trying to hide it. Tony caught Fury’s eye and grinned wildly at him, and the air around him took on a crackling texture for one short, sharp moment before sizzling away.

“Are we getting this show on the road or what?” Tony asked, pulling out a seat with a wave of his hand. “I need to go bribe someone into giving me an apparition licence.” Fury sighed. Of all the possible things for raw magic to be funnelled into, it had to go to Tony Stark.

“I want you assurance that my brother will not be harmed should he show his face here again,” Thor said, jumping in before anyone else could.

“Sure,” Banner replied with a nervous smile. “Except how about we agree that it doesn’t count as ‘harm’ if we’re defending ourselves?”

“Or taking a pre-emptive strike,” Rogers cut in.

“Fuck that crazy asshole,” Rhodes said, slapping his palm down on the table. “I want to know what you’re doing to track down Stane.”

“My brother and your friend are most likely together,” Thor replied.

“Hey, that guy is _not_ our friend,” Rhodey shot back.

“Is he really your brother?” Doctor Foster asked. “He seemed like a monster.”

Thor looked amazingly bashful for someone with his size and position. “He’s had a trying week.”

“Can we cut to the chase here?” Tony asked as he waved one hand in the air to draw everyone’s attention, aided by the illusion of flowers that trailed from his fingertips. Ms Potts cleared them away with a flick of her wand, an action that already seemed to be an unthinking habit. “Firstly, if your brother and my brother are out there together, there’s a very good chance they’re recruiting more people to their neglected siblings club.” He gave Fury a pointed look. “So you’d better have a damn good plan behind that eye patch for how to deal with them. Secondly, what the hell is the Muggle doing here?”

“You’re _not_ removing my memory,” Foster said firmly, as if she honestly had a way of preventing such a thing. Of course, she wasn’t entirely alone in her corner.

“You would dare tamper with Lady Foster’s mind? After her valiant assistance in battle?”

“I need to be really honest with you all here,” Ms Lewis said, leaning forwards. “If you give her the time to collect some rocks and charge my taser, she could probably take you all.” Bishop nodded in agreement.

Phil looked at Fury and raised the eyebrow above his brown eye. “She was going to get brought into the fold anyway,” he said blandly. “The timing’s just serendipity.”

Banner looked over at Phil with a carefully blank face. “I didn’t know you were keeping up with the inner workings of SHIELD,” he said with minimal inflection.

“Yeah,” Stark said, peering over at Phil. “Aren’t you a teacher? Why are you even here?”

“In case someone needs to be sent to detention,” Phil replied. On the back of Phil’s seat, Barton ruffled his feathers and then smoothed them back down, looking awfully pleased for an animal that didn’t have lips.

“Can we please get back to the topic of hand?” Rogers said impatiently, his voice loud and authoritarian. “There is a threat out there that we barely handled. I want to know what you plan to do the next time he strikes, because he will strike again. Men like Loki do everything they can to get more and more power, and with Stane’s knowledge and connections Loki is only going to get more formidable.”

“Aaaand thank you for that little speech, Captain,” Stark said, leaning back and his chair and fanning himself. “I mean, wow, I am just feeling so motivated and patriotic right now.” Rogers gave Stark a truly withering look in response.

“We do have a plan,” Fury said calmly, cutting through the bickering in the room. “We get all relevant experts in sourcery and combat in one place, and they form the chair of the new defence initiative.”

Banner laughed awkwardly. “What, us? You expect us to be able to keep America safe when we barely got through it all ourselves?”

“No,” Fury replied. “I expect you to keep the _world_ safe.”

Banner shook his head, a dazed smile on his face. “Of course, that makes much more sense.”

Barton slid out of his bird form though he remained seated on the back of Phil’s chair, his knees bracketing Phil’s shoulders. “You’re actually serious about this,” he said, giving Fury a hard look that was more habit than critique.

“All of you have things that you need,” Fury said, casting his eye around the room. “Some of you need assistance, and we can deliver that.” Asgard was said to be crumbling already, and Thor had a pinched fierceness to his conversations with Banner that suggested the rumours were true. “Some of you simply need your liberties to stay constant,” Rogers’ face was stony and Banner stared down at his hands. Fury gave Stark a pointed look, because there were dark murmurings about his sudden change in fortune already. “At the very least, we can keep things from getting worse. Some of you have jobs to do and some of you have debts to pay.”

“Some of you refused to stay in the waiting room,” Barton added, leaning over to flick Ms Bishop in the ear. She swatted at him in return, and then looked abashed when Coulson gave her a particularly disapproving glare.

Captain Rogers gave Fury a dubious look. “I don’t know of you noticed, but we’ve made a mess of things already.” 

Fury looked around the room and gave the assembled people a grim smile. “As far as I’m concerned, that just makes you all uniquely qualified to clean it up.”

Dr Foster raised one hand. “Do we get any say in this recruitment matter?” she asked.

“None at all,” Fury replied. “Welcome to the initiative.”


End file.
